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Democracy vs Digital Infrastructure: Pulitzer-Winning Journalist Charts 'The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State' (indianexpress.com) 86

Posted by EditorDavid from the digital-decline dept.
The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State ultimately asks the question, "How did we cede control of our democracy to the machines, and can we get it back?" according to the Harvard's Arts and Sciences site, FAS Current: The new title finds Lepore, who used to teach a course at the College titled "The Rise and Fall of the Machine," charting the ascent of what she calls the artificial state: the digital communication infrastructure by which governments and private corporations automate and ultimately control public discourse. Following her Pulitzer Prize win for "We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution" (2025), "I wanted to think about whether liberal constitutional democracies can survive this moment in time," Lepore shared in a phone interview...

[In the "current ChatGPT moment"] Lepore found herself asking: "Who are the people who are clamoring to be replaced by machines, to have movies made by machines, and novels written by machines?" And who, she continued, is pushing for our government to be determined by these machines? In the book, Lepore notes that technological tools are increasingly influencing elections around the world... However, she sees the 2026 U.S. midterms as an inflection point. In a recent piece in the Financial Times, Lepore wrote, "This year marks the first AI election. Voters are asking chatbots how they should vote. Campaigns and activists are using AI to analyze the electorate, send micro-targeted messages, produce tailored ads and even deepfakes...."

Lepore stresses in the book that "nobody should trust historians to make predictions," but she believes it's possible for democratic citizens to wrest back control. Referencing proposals such as New York's data center moratorium law, Lepore ends by describing a "growing and increasingly noisy tech backlash."

"It's not foreordained. This isn't inevitable," she said during the interview.
"In the book's epilogue Lepore predicts, as her title suggests, a fall of the Artificial State," writes the California Review of Books. "That argument turns out to be speculative, much more of a hope than a certainty." [Lepore] does support her prediction by positing that the Artificial State is "poorly designed and badly built," that it has not given people safety and happiness but rather a prison of glowing screens, and that a majority of Americans want more control over AI. To escape the Artificial State we will have to imagine a different future by gaining more knowledge of the past in a search for meaning. Of course, powerful forces want to deny that and turn us into servile automatons.
The Guardian adds that "While Lepore interprets much classic sci-fi, such as Isaac Asimov, as cautionary, she observes that "the architects of the Artificial State seem to have read these stories, unironically, as instruction manuals, guides for how to build robots that would one day rule the world". (The Atlantic writes that "What one gathers from these misreadings is not so much that science fiction itself is nefarious, but that arrested development might be...")

But The Indian Express writes that despite the author's bleak conclusion, "Lepore is not a pessimist. Because the Artificial State is a construct, neither alive, nor truly indestructible, she argues it is still possible to take it apart... [T]his is a clear-eyed reckoning rather than a doomsday tract. It is not an easy read, but an essential one for anyone unsettled by the pace of the AI wave."

Democracy vs Digital Infrastructure: Pulitzer-Winning Journalist Charts 'The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State' More | Reply

Democracy vs Digital Infrastructure: Pulitzer-Winning Journalist Charts 'The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State'

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  • They cited the wrong author (Score:5, Interesting)

    by karlandtanya ( 601084 ) on Sunday September 20, 2026 @04:44PM (#66345020)

    Thou shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by r1348 ( 2567295 )

      See you at the Butlerian jihad then!

    • I had not ever even considered the thought that some people might use AI/ChatBots to ask who to vote for....?

      That just baffles me...wow....

      • You think that's baffling, what about all of the people who voted for Trump twice, after they already knew he fucks kids?

        • You think that's baffling, what about all of the people who voted for Trump twice, after they already knew he fucks kids?

          People keep repeating that nonsense about kids a Trump lately.....with no proof whatsoever .

          I mean, where do you get that? There's no idicement or charges or any evidence anyone has brought forward.

          If it were even remotely true....do you not think the Dems when in power under Biden would not have ensnared him with even charges on that?

          • I mean, where do you get that? There's no idicement or charges or any evidence anyone has brought forward.

            More evidence has been presented publicly that Trump fucked kids than was necessary to convict Cosby or Weinstein. There are more accusers, too. You are willfully and deliberately working to attempt to conceal this fact. You are working to protect child rape. Someone should check your hard disk.

            • More evidence has been presented publicly that Trump fucked kids than was necessary to convict Cosby or Weinstein. There are more accusers, too.

              Citations please?

              Surely there are valid new stories about such by major networks, major news sources?

          • Yeah! They need to leave him alone, all he did was run a teen beauty pageant that was mostly swimsuit competition, he only bragged about 'inspecting' the backstage a couple times, he was only the third most mentioned person in the Epstien files.

            It's not like billionaires can get away with literally any crime in America or anything, not with the righteous law and order republicans in control of the country.

            No sir, there's absolutely no way Trump rapes kids, unless you count all the sworn testimony from Epsti

      • I had not ever even considered the thought that some people might use AI/ChatBots to ask who to vote for....?

        That just baffles me...wow....

        That one threw me for a loop as well. I had to search for citations to back up the assertion.

        In hindsight though, I realize that I shouldn't have been surprised. I've seen enough videos of yahoos expressing their "rationale" for voting for Trump, that I wonder if AI and chatbot recommendations might be an improvement.

        • I've seen enough videos of yahoos expressing their "rationale" for voting for Trump, that I wonder if AI and chatbot recommendations might be an improvement.

          It was simple....better choice than cackling Kamala....

      • "I asked ChatGPT..." is an increasingly common start to a topic on many platforms for any subject that puzzles the poster. The Left hand side of the bell-curve is a large and powerful demographic that MAGA (and especially it's chief figurehead) are adept at cultivating.

  • Wrong premise. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Sunday September 20, 2026 @06:16PM (#66345096)

    The real question that should be asked is why the fuck are we in a slave society where the only options are work, go to jail, or die? Machines have solved our farming problem where you needed to work on your farm every day and yet things keep getting worse! It's not like, "well if you work, you'll have something to show for it" is true because a tiny fraction of the population owns everything and they are making it worse by the day.

    The AI is only being made because the slave masters demand it. Nobody said, "oh fuck, I wish there were more AI to annoy me while I'm trying to use my computer," it's big corps controlled by the billionaire class. Wake the fuck up.

    • Work (Score:2, Interesting)

      by JBMcB ( 73720 )

      The real question that should be asked is why the fuck are we in a slave society where the only options are work, go to jail, or die?

      For the vast majority of human history, the only options were to grow food or starve to death. If you have to work to survive now, what would the other option be? Other people work to provide you with food, clothes, internet, energy, and entertainment and you don't have to do anything?

      You are absolutely free to go back to subsistence farming if you want. It's backbreaking awful work and nobody wants to do it, but you'll own everything you make (except for what you have to give up for property taxes of co

      • Re:Work (Score:5, Insightful)

        by quenda ( 644621 ) on Sunday September 20, 2026 @11:06PM (#66345340)

        For the vast majority of human history, the only options were to grow food or starve to death.

        Actually, growing food is a recent innovation. Mostly it was hunting and gathering. And when resources were low, war with the next group over the hill was better than starving.

          Hunter-gatherers had far more leisure time than peasant farmers, more even than a typical worker today. But the land supports far fewer people that way.

        • Guess what? Peasant farmers worked less hours a year than we do.

          Yeah, they had a lesser lifestyle, but increases in productivity mean that we should be able to do less work still and still have more.

          • Well, farming is largely waiting for crops to grow. You can still do it if you want.

            Though you may be surprised at how much of your "free time" has to be devoted to making and repairing things you'd otherwise buy.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by JBMcB ( 73720 )

            Peasant farmers worked less hours a year than we do.

            Possibly because they were working for a large landowner whom provided certain services in exchange for their work. If you want to subsistence farm, you need to work a LOT. Most Amish farmers, for example, work 10-14 hour days year-round.

        • They also died by 30, if they were lucky. I wonder if they still have more total leisure time then someone that lives to 80 in modern times.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by quenda ( 644621 )

            They also died by 30

            Thats an old myth, based on life expectancy ay birth. Those who survived childhood would expect to live another 40 years. Living to their 70s was common.

            • Speaking of hunter/gather societies, there were A LOT of ways you could die that we take for granted today. Simply falling and scrapping yourself could lead to infection. Hunting with a spear is dangerous, even on a good hunt. Any wound from the animal can cause infection or disease. Bad water sources can kill you. The list goes on for things we just take care of today and often times don't run into in the first place.

              I don't doubt they have more leisure time since sitting around doing little is a good way

      • Man fuck history, this is now! I don't give two fucks what Russian peasants did in 1432, I care about what is possible today. And today something better is possible if we stop letting the billionaires convince us all that our neighbor who's just as fucked as we are is stealing all the money!

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 )
      I see plenty of people around me living a life without work, or doing only a little work on their own terms, who are not in jail or dead, and often seem pretty happy. You have options. But no one is going to hand them to you on a platter. Capitalist societies have created an utterly unprecedented standard of living, not for the ultra wealthy, but for the masses. And social democracies have taken the edge off capitalism by ensuring a minimum standard of living that is still pretty good, to those who cann

      • Why haven't humanity's experiments with utopian societies worked out better? It's not like we haven't tried. Over and over. The closest successes I have seen are the anabaptists and the kibbutz. While successful, there is no shortage of hard work in their success.

        • Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time [...]

          -- Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947

          • I'm interested in seeing what an open-source AI government would be like, with voter control over the values-knob

        • Good question - I think there are still viable kibbutz operating in Israel; something like 70% of the food is grown by collective farms, and there are even kibbutz that make high-tech and military hardware. Privatization, the promises of getting rich working for a corporation (lol) and a lack of generational alignment with kibbutz goals are probably the main drivers of the ends of individual kibbutzes. The "failed" experiments were more of a failure to be permanent. Permanence is difficult if the idealism g

      • Though in all of this, the machines are merely tools, none of this happened because of the machines.

        When machines can replace humans, they are more than tools. They become threats to peoples' livelihoods. The current rise of AI is not the first time this has happened.

        People increasingly voting for radical right parties is not because people have become more right wing, or because they have been unduly influenced by AI or social media, but because they have become disillusioned with the mainstream politicians.

        Something/someone is encouraging this disillusionment. Such encouragement can be convincing in conditions where the status quo appears to be failing. And that is when a radical authoritarian (right or left) can take power by following two simple steps: (1) get people angry, confused, or afraid; and (2) present themselves as the only solution.

    • The real question that should be asked is why the fuck are we in a slave society where the only options are work, go to jail, or die?

      The short answer is that the societies that are like that are more productive. They will take you over and force it on you anyway.

    • The real question that should be asked is why the fuck are we in a slave society where the only options are work, go to jail, or die?

      So you're asking "why can't I be a lazy ass and have everyone take care of my needs for me"??

      • Yeah! Only the wealthy get to do that!

      • The real question that should be asked is why the fuck are we in a slave society where the only options are work, go to jail, or die?

        So you're asking "why can't I be a lazy ass and have everyone take care of my needs for me"??

        No, the question being asked is "why do my taxes go to corporate welfare instead of to building a society which supports me, my family, and my countrymen?".

        Do you really believe that assholes like Musk and Bezos actually earned fortunes so vast that they alter the course of entire nations? If you do, then I invite you to grow up and get a clue. In "trickle down economics" the only thing that's trickling down is piss.

    • That's profoundly childish. It takes resources to keep you alive. Why shouldn't you be responsible for providing them?

      • That's profoundly selfish. Shock amazement

        • So, the selfish thing isn't to insist everyone else work to support you, it's to say that demand is childish?

      • It takes resources to keep you alive. Why shouldn't you be responsible for providing them?

        We have the resources to keep everyone alive with minimal effort. Why should the bulk of society have to suffer for the few who hoard resources but did nothing to earn them?

        • Suffer? You think having to work is suffering? So, I have to suffer more to support your selfish apathy and laziness? I have to surrender the benefits of my hard work so that you can sleep in? F-k you. No.

          I have to work to earn what I have. You have to work to earn what you have. It doesn't matter what anyone else has, their lives aren't yours. Resenting what others have doesn't help you, it hurts you.

          • You think having to work is suffering?

            Anything that takes time away from what you would rather be doing is a form of suffering.

            So, I have to suffer more to support your selfish apathy and laziness?

            Quite the opposite, you wouldn't need to work to survive. You may refuse to acknowledge it but the basic needs of people have been warped into weapons of enslavement. There are plenty of homes and yet homes are unaffordable. There is plenty of food and yet the cost of it keeps increasing. You used to be able to support your family and own a home on a minimum wage job but now to own a home you need dual incomes.

            I have to work to earn what I have. You have to work to earn what you have.

            What abo

    • The question has the answer. âoeSlave societyâ. The chains are hidden. We already had housing and food scarcity licked in the 80s. As productivity increased, more scarcity and excuses had to be manufactured. âoeWe have to stay competitive.â And apparently, profits to shareholders arenâ(TM)t a part of the price?

      This is something that really paints the picture; around 2015 our MIC consolidated military contractors from hundreds down to about five. âoeEfficiencyâ led to 50%

  • I can see idiots using AI to make ads and do other Candidate Manager type jobs.

    I can also see a few idiots using AI to decide how to vote. But:
    Straight Party voters will not use AI in the general election.
    Less involved party members may use it in the Primary, but the motivated will know who to vote for and ignore AI.

    Most independents who do not care will not vote.
    Independents who are motivated will know who to vote for and ignore AI.

    In other words, I see AI as having a minimal effect among those that will

    • Don't forget what the median IQ is. Add a few points to that and you get people who think they're smarter than everyone else using Gemini to make trivial decisions like "what should I eat tonight?"

  • ... pushing for our government ...

    They''re called technocrats and they've been around for 90 years. But the US government got really complex in the 1940s, so the machines of the day couldn't create a push-button administration. The hope is, that modern AI will and the ruling class will once again use religious morality to control and kill the working class.

    It's a matter of inconvenience that the US voter is overpowered by propaganda and misinformation, a powerful AI algorithm is discovered, and a renewed demand for a technocracy, happen

    • a renewed demand for a technocracy

      Technocracy is the subject at hand and unless we are all planning to go back to the 1900 or even the late 20th century nothing is going to stop humanity's desire to progress. If you also consider that some humans have a desire for absolute power and control then you have a starting point for why many systems of government have issues; Human beings are incredibly varied in their desires and opinions.

      If you then couple the above with the wide prevalence of mental illness throughout humans then we arrive t

      • Democracy evolved into dumb-ocracy, but it wasn't natural selection, but rather extremely artificial. Humans DECIDED that it should favor the wealthy, and made it happen, it didn't just magically occur and the only natural law at play is that those with the most resources have the most agency.

        Therefore it's crony capitalism that evolved into technocracy, not democracy.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MrKaos ( 858439 )

          Democracy evolved into dumb-ocracy, but it wasn't natural selection, but rather extremely artificial. Humans DECIDED that it should favor the wealthy, and made it happen, it didn't just magically occur and the only natural law at play is that those with the most resources have the most agency

          This is exactly what Franklin was trying to warn us about. He was saying "Look this constitution is good and I think government is a good idea but none of it is perfect". He was saying that a day will come when the ideas that make a nation great will be subject to corruption. Look at the Soviet Union, that also collapsed from corruption but I don;t see anyone in the west saying "Hey that could happen to us too". You're not going find any argument from me that corruption is bad. It is the enemy of civil

          • Complaining to me does nothing.

            I'm trying to get people on to the bus. Running next to it for a block or two shouting about how complaining to you does nothing does nothing.

            Crony capitalism is devolving us towards corporatism

            Crony capitalism is what you think is called corporatism [wikipedia.org].

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by MrKaos ( 858439 )

              Crony capitalism is what you think is called corporatism [wikipedia.org].

              It looks like it's the other way around. DP we've had some really good conversations over the years. Of late I've seen a lot of outrage from you which is odd because it seems like we agree on many, but not all, things. With all sincerity, I hope you are ok.

              I'm trying to get people on to the bus. Running next to it for a block or two shouting about how complaining to you does nothing does nothing.

              I've analyzed roughly 12-18 acts of law, some international agreements and written letter to politician on both sides of politics framed in language they understand. My work here raised awareness amongst politicians who didn't realize some of the thin

  • This will not be the first election I will consult a chatbot. I've been using AI as a research assistant for local elections for a while now. Before chatbots I used search engines to research candidates and initiatives. And before that.... You get the idea.

    If you think only chatbots are given to untruths, look at what candidates and lobbyists write in print media. It's reliably as crazy as AI hallucinations.

    • I should have added that applying critical thinking and adopting a skeptical attitude will help you make good decisions in elections and many other things. AI does not change that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dargaud ( 518470 )
      So, if you ask the various chatbots who you should vote for for the midterms, what do they answer ?
  • For extremely minor criticism of Trump in the 2024 election. You could lay in the Biden as much as you wanted but if you didn't sane wash The Donald you were looking for a new job sharpish.

    I guess what I'm saying is when it comes to journalism AI is the least of our worries. 90% of all media is now billionaire owned. Anytime journalism starts to take off again they swoop in and buy it out start firing people. All they have to do is wait for inevitable downturns in the economy and sooner or later some pe

    • Yeah this. People are stupid as fuck when they think AI is the cause of all of our woes. Corporations are effectively just big machines and they've been chewing us up and spitting us out since before computers were even invented. It doesn't matter if the code runs on silicon or meat and paper.

    • Then where did the coverup of Biden's mental collapse come from? The government told social media companies to silence people who were critical of Biden. What do you call that?

      • The government asked media to be nice to Biden and they weren't. There were shitloads of reports of his incompetence, every time he so much as misspoke it was all over the news. Fuck off with your gaslighting, maggot.

        • But from NBC and CNN? I'm sure Fox and Newsmax had a field day with it, but was Rachel or the View talking about it? My Democrat friends were quite dismayed to see Biden in that debate with Trump. Like, they really didn't see it coming until it was right there. So the cover up worked for those who wanted to believe it and it didn't work on those who didn't want to believe it. Go figure.

          Most News sources that weren't "right wing" were either really polite or pretty quiet on the matter.

          Pretty sure the USA pro

          • Yes, every news outlet. All of them. Some were nicer about it than others but all were asking questions about his ability. IDGAF about entertainment programs like The View though, if you have to bring that up to try to support the point then you've already failed. It's not a news program.

            • I mean, Fox isn't News either but a lot of people treat it as such. It's all political commentary and we all got opinions. These folks also have a well backed platform.

      • The government told social media companies to silence people who were critical of Biden. What do you call that?

        And Musk - remember, he was that "DOGE" guy - censored Twitt-X posts that were critical of the Trump administration. And the Trump government has wielded the FCC as a ban-hammer in an attempt to silence Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, while the FCC's Brendan Carr praised Bari Weiss for neutering 60 minutes. "Both sidesism" tends to be a zero-sum game, but in this case it seems appropriate.

        We should ALL have, as a common goal, responsible governments which value all citizens equally and ensure that predati

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PCM2 ( 4486 )

        The government told social media companies to silence people who were critical of Biden.

        When did this happen? Citation, please.

        You are aware that Joe Biden, while seemingly a nice enough guy, was wildly unpopular as a leader, including among the left? It was the Democrats, after all, who convinced him not to run for a second term.

  • The New York Times won one for genocide denial during the holodomor. It's not something to be proud of.

  • If social media was in the bible, would it be work of the god or the devil.

    I am leaning more toward devil.

    Social Media is the tower of babel, or a tower of babble, and I am just as complicit contributing here, hoping someone will up my post and give me a little boost of dopamine.

    The people built the tower of babel up to the sky to reach god, see if he was still there, god didn't like that, faith should be enough and broke the tower and made all the people speak different languages and not understand each ot

  • Sensitive new age guys bullied at school who would champion the little man. Asperger savants who wold be kind to fellow sufferers. Turns the "autistic" only think about themselves and hated other people anyway.

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