Frontier spaces - by Arnold Engel - Margin Points
Margin Points
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Frontier spaces<br>Library of AI-lexandria<br>Jun 22, 2026
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What are you working on? What are you learning? Imagine that your session with Claude Code has kicked off and you are talking to a new friend you made last week. You are both sitting at the frontier library where Anthropic has rolled out access to Fable—the only place in the world where you can get access. It’s a visit to the future and it’s much more social and human than we all might have thought it would be.<br>Constraints can spark creativity. That Fable, the world’s current frontier AI model, is not currently accessible due to export restrictions is a major constraint. As a result of the restriction, we should think about a creative way of providing access to the newest frontier AI model.<br>The greatest library of the ancient world, the Library of Alexandria, provides a way to think about an in-person experience that would dramatically change the landscape around frontier AI.<br>Anthropic can open up a physical library space where people could go and access Fable (or the latest frontier model) only while at the library. It’s the most modern manifestation of an ancient space: the reading room. Adjacent to the reading rooms, you could have discussion halls and salons.<br>Today, as we adjust to life with powerful AI impacting us at work and at home, there are some desires that are coming to the forefront. There is a clearer view of what being on the cutting edge and living in the future looks like. There is also a community seeking going on—primarily online—for making sure they are on that cutting edge or at least not falling far behind.<br>We want to live on the cutting edge with technology, even if not everyone wants the societal impact of that. We seek human connections and want to share more than ever before. We want help or companionship in exploring the frontier. How you use AI is the modern equivalent of finding your way with telephone etiquette in the post-Alexander Graham Bell period. We’re all figuring it out and the etiquette is unevenly distributed. The technology isn’t going anywhere—so let’s talk to each other and figure out how to use it right.1<br>Have you tried setting up Claude Code like this? What are you trying to do? These questions would hum around the spaces. Of course, space would be available for discussion and the right amount of mixing to be interesting. Writers meshing with engineers, business with consumer, investor with entrepreneur. Today, our concepts for what you do with AI are incredibly siloed based on your prior experiences. A physical space breaks out from that and brings together different interests in a way that could be quite stimulating. This is diametrically different from how a lot of people use AI today: either completely alone or on a floor with many people from their company. Sharing notes on X about the experience is not the same as engaging in the practice in real life sitting next to others focused on a range of pursuits. Some of the human ingenuity will surely be applied to organize the space for optimal cross-pollination. A very human and social endeavor to make something grander in partnership with AI than could otherwise be achieved alone.<br>That you have to make a trip is significant. Scholars took pilgrimages to Alexandria for the library. It presupposes thought and planning and understanding of the space you are making for AI in your life. Of course, more generic, less advanced AI would be easily available wherever, whenever. The fact that the most advanced frontier model isn’t available everywhere forces us to think that much more about what we want to do with it and how we want to interface.<br>The Library of Alexandria had some peculiarities that wouldn’t be recognizable to modern library-goers. Access was very limited and controlled fully. There was no checking out the scrolls from the library.<br>Apropos of today’s LLMs, when you came into the harbor of Alexandria as a scholar, your scrolls of knowledge were copied for use in the library. They took your knowledge and copied it in order to grant you access to the library. This, while fostering a community of scholars, made the library better with each visitor. There was a realpolitik behind it that of course has been recreated with the foundational model companies today who train on your data. We now know how this can compound.2 It’s revealing that the trading of data for access was entrenched in the time of the Library of Alexandria. That doesn’t mean it is pleasant or comforting—more of an iron law that can be relied on at certain moments of history to aggregate knowledge and power at critical transitions.3<br>As customers, you want to feel that connection and openness to business. Having an in-person connection goes beyond the time that you spend in the library—it lingers and sustains with memories and emotions. You have touched all the senses of that brand and you feel like...