In 1787 the case for a republic was made one numbered paper at a time, to neighbors, in plain language, under a signature. The Forge Papers borrow the form for a smaller question with the same shape: how a free people should take up a powerful new tool without handing over the things that made them free. One paper a month. No hype, no calendar to fill. RSS.
A neighbor's response on artificial intelligence, and why the harder question is not what AI will do to us, but what it reveals about us.
Everyone agrees AI will change every industry. Almost nobody asks who it will serve, and the answer, so far, is not the man who built the country.
If the fruit of your labor is yours, so is the record of it. What data sovereignty really means in plain terms, and where the box should actually sit.
On April 28, 2026, a moderator, a monastic, an attorney, a scientist, a writer, and a former Google trust-and-safety hand sat with a room full of Watertown neighbors and worked five questions. The papers that follow will take one question each, drawing on what the panel and the room actually said, with their permission, and in their words where they gave them.
Each paper stands on its own. If you disagree with one, that's the conversation working. Write to me and I'll answer, and if you're right, the next paper will say so. The conversation on AI belongs to us.