MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Normally, an historian like Jill Lepore writes about the past - in her case, bestselling, prize-winning histories about politics and the law. But Lepore sees a real and compelling danger in an inescapable phenomenon of the present, one which she says compelled her to write her latest book. It's called "The Rise And Fall Of The Artificial State," and Jill Lepore is here to tell us what that is. Good morning. Thank you so much for joining us.
JILL LEPORE: Hey. Good morning. Thanks so much for having me.
MARTIN: So everybody's heard by this time about artificial intelligence, but what is the artificial state?
LEPORE: It's the successor state to a liberal democracy, right? A - kind of a new kind of state that is fast emerging in which public discourse is owned by and controlled by privately owned corporations, and much of the functions of nation-states are being taken over by corporations and run by machinery. So it's essentially government by machine instead of government by consent.
MARTIN: And you're saying that this has really already happened to some degree.
LEPORE: I think it's very much underway. And what I wanted to do in writing the book was to name it because I think it's kind of baffling. Like, people wake up and read the newspaper and say, what is actually going on? And I think having a name for what's going on is maybe helpful.
MARTIN: You say that their effects - and this is your main focus here. Their effects on political discourse, representative democracy and constitutional government have been almost wholly malign. You say that liberal democratic states make citizens. The artificial state makes trolls. So tell us why it is that you say that.
LEPORE: You know, I - people that have been hawking innovations in computer technology since the 1980s have been really interested in making promises that every new step in the evolution of these technologies would abet democracy. And then there's the same promise now with artificial intelligence - right? - that it's a - that it will abet democracy.
But, like, we actually take stock historically, you know, using quantitative evidence and inspecting the studies of political theorists about democratic erosion, especially since the era of social media. We really see abundant evidence across the world of the degree to which these tools have undermined democracy and have aided and abetted the rise of authoritarianism around the world.
MARTIN: And what about places around the world where there was never a particularly robust kind of local news ecosystem? What there?
LEPORE: Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. The decay, the democratic backsliding that are - that is among the effects of social media is much more severe in healthy democratic societies - right? - than in places that just don't have a democratic infrastructure. There's less to unravel.
MARTIN: The strong impression I get from your book is that you actually think this is intentional. Is that accurate?
LEPORE: So not exactly. So I think most of it happened by accident. Like, most of these things are perfect. Like, think about the polling example, right? Like, oh, well, George Gallup used to send people out to knock on doors. Then it became a little more efficient, once more Americans had phones, to do that on the phone, right? Like, that seems just - like, that's harmless. That's not, like, malign.
But I think once you get into the 21st century, by the 2010s, the kind of cultish worship that the press offered up to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs - those guys really turned libertarian, for one thing. There's a big strain of libertarianism in Silicon Valley. But they also came to believe that their power as corporate titans was above that of the nation-state. They began to talk about themselves in these extraordinary terms and to see themselves as unaccountable to any government. Not just because of their libertarianism. Because - but because of this kind of, like, techno-messianism. Like, just that they were gods among us, that they controlled the future of the planet.
MARTIN: You say - this is why I say that you suggest that this is intentional. You say if the executives in charge of the corporations building the infrastructure of the artificial state had once been blind to the social and political problems they were causing, they eventually came to see at least some of those harms. This did not deter them. And you quote, for example, Peter Thiel saying, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. Well, what about free will? I mean, do people - people don't have to engage with these systems. They don't have to be on Facebook.
LEPORE: No, we don't have to. And I think, you know, you'll see an increasing tech backlash where people are uncomfortable using them. I think the public opinion polling, you know, is - like, it's upwards of 70% of Americans are opposed to data centers - of - don't think that AI will bring anything good to their lives. There's a lot of discomfort with it, and yet our entire economy has been turned upside down in order to advance it.
MARTIN: So, you know, the book is titled "The Rise And Fall Of The Artificial State," and you argue that other forms of malign governance can be brought down. So what's the plan here, Professor Lepore?
(LAUGHTER)
LEPORE: Yeah. Don't go for the historians when you need the pitchforks. Like, I - all we have is pencils. You know, I just think it's really useful to think about, actually, literature. You know, science fiction has - is filled with what I call the parable of the artificial state. Like, going back to the 1860s, people imagine, oh, one day, if the machines get really good and gets - get more powerful and become intelligent, they could replace government. And then we'd be ruled by machines, and what would we do?
But there are also stories within that world of science fiction of successful defeating. Like, people have to stand up and say, I am not just a piece of data. I am a voter. I am a citizen. I get to decide. People who own the machines don't get to decide. Democratic deliberation is what will save this country and any other democracy. And that has to be face-to-face, and it has to be people sitting down in a room together. And it has to be - it has to involve a commitment to getting better information, getting information from reputed journalists and news organizations and committing to doing the work of imagining a different future for our democracy than one in which we are ruled by the three richest men on the planet.
MARTIN: That is Jill Lepore. She's the author of "The Rise And Fall Of The Artificial State." Professor Jill Lepore, thanks so much for talking with me.
LEPORE: Thanks so much, Michel. This was a lot of fun.
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