AI and Democracy: How to Replace Politicians.

A.I. will break the internet as we know it

The internet is in decay. Do a Google search, and there are many websites filled with highly ranked content published on Facebook, YouTube, X and TikTok all used to entertain you or feel more fun. On top of that has come AI-generated junk. TikTok videos of A.I.-generated voices reading text become available. There’s been a bulk of spammy news sites filled with A.I.-generated articles. And self-published A.I.-authored books are already polluting Amazon and other book listings. Once-great media and publishing companies with responsible and authoritative content are trailed behind, being unable to find a proper business model that can compete with unexpected rivals.

Social media platforms appeared to be unprepared for the storm of A.I. content. There are a lot of speculations regarding the necessity to watermark the artificially generated content. As for now, this seems to be the only realistic approach that came out as a result of two world summits devoted to the challenges associated with the generative AI. This proposal will unlikely solve the problem; it only proves that human brain can no longer able to distinguish what is real and what is false.

Positive sides of AI

If Google algorithm is focused on producing results to make money from the most popular and entertaining content A.I. might be a “cleaner” for the internet focusing on more professional and competent information and not on entertaining or funny content.

However, the challenge is also there. In the beginning was the word. It means that language was not only something that differs homo from other species. Language was an instrument to create things that existed only in the imagination. Language helped to make from Zero to One, to create things. But even imagination was a result of a word. That what we call creativity. And creativity is directly linked with copyrights. The idea of copyright is a type of intellectual property that protects someone’s ownership of original works or authorship. The purpose of copywrite is to encourage creativity as the creators are protected from exploitation of their works by others.

If I publish an article in an authoritative magazine I expect to be awarded not only by a small payment for the article, but much broader name recognition in a professional field.

With AI the author is unknown. You don’t care where the AI took information – whether it is Britannica, Wikipedia, Bloomberg or Harward Business Review. You will just get used to the fact; the AI generated results are the most competent. With AI Britannica is dead! Wikipedia is dead. Why you should go and dig into Wiki articles, or pay for any professional magazine, if you can ask Open AI and the answer will be on the tip of your nails?

AI not only entered the field of using words, ability to create stories, myths, that was exclusively belonged to humans. AI not only will be able to create new scientific concepts, arts, etc. taking from humans their exclusive skills to create. This would be half bad. It steals from humans their intellectual property thus depriving them the energy to create, to innovate.

Currently we rely on elite experts in different fields, e.g., medical care to doctors, document production to lawyers, software coding to computer engineers and finally political experts and public opinion leaders on politics. These “assistants,” serve as your advocate with others, and as a butler with you. This requires an intimacy greater than your search engine, email provider, cloud storage system or phone. You’re going to want it with you 24/7, constantly training on everything you do. You will want it to know everything about you, so it can most effectively work on your behalf.

Humans train AI on massive amount of data making their algorithms the ability to analyze and learn. Soon we will observe opposite trend. AI has already started to train humans to believe in its knowledge, expertise and creativity in every sphere of human’s activity. We already started to rely on AI in decision-making process asking it for expertise and advice.  

And here comes a real trap to democracy. After we will get used to the idea that AI could be expert in everything, why not to ask it, who is better – candidate A or B? And since we are already trained to believe AI is better than any expert in professional field, we will also tend to believe it in social life.

A.I. can engage with voters, conduct polls and fund-raise at a scale that humans cannot — for all sizes of elections. More interestingly, future politicians will largely be A.I.-driven. I don’t mean that A.I. will replace humans as politicians. But as A.I. starts to look and feel more human, our politicians will start to look and feel more like A.I. We can imagine a personal A.I. directly participating in policy debates on our behalf, along with millions of other personal A.I.s, and coming to a consensus on policy. 

Hidden expert.

The idea of democracy is to prove people your position is right. And to convince them you are capable to fulfill your promises. Democracy – when you can confront your opponent face to face and get into discussion with him. With social networks you cannot identify your opponent, who can use fake accounts to attack you.

Bot farms are created in order to attack the opponent and venerate the one, whom “elves” work for.  With the spread of bot farms, you cannot convince “elves” – they act and write according to the specific instructions; they cannot be convinced, they are blind and deaf to your arguments. Imagine, millions of elves will not attack someone with similar arguments, prepared by someone but intellectually, using diversified and well-grounded arguments generated by AI. 

A.I. has begun to touch the very idea and practice of democracy.

Democracies have been seen to be superior to autocracies due to their superior performance as information aggregators and processors.

Free expression, a free press and electorally channeled competition between factions provide democracies with structural mechanisms that surface information about society, the actions of bureaucracies and the impact of policies. In contrast, autocracies restrict information flows by controlling speech, the media and political competition, leaving governments in the dark regarding local situations.

In the competition between democratic and autocratic states artificial intelligence can help authoritarian leaders: A.I. in autocracies creates an environment of permissive privacy regulation that provides developers and modelers with vast troves of data, allowing them to refine A.I.-enabled models of human behavior.

Artificial intelligence may enable “autocracies to overcome this disadvantage. The clearest example at present is China, which uses large-scale data collection and A.I. to support social planning and control — such as through its Social Credit System.

Along these lines, artificial intelligence could provide authoritarian leaders access to the needs and views of their constituents, helping autocracies increase their state capacities through A.I.-assisted governance and planning, increasing the quality of state-provided public services.

If performed effectively and accurately, improved public services “might provide people living in autocracies with greater cultural, economic and health-related opportunities which, in turn, would encourage people to see these benefits as a worthy trade-off with some individual freedoms, leading to strengthened public support for autocracies and state control.