Why AI can destroy democracy (and what we can do about it)
#421
Friend of Democracy,
If people are increasingly turning to AI for information, and if AI companies continue not to pay those who collect, evaluate, and publish Information, then, sooner or later, there will be no solid information anymore.
Simply because trustworthy information will no longer be produced. Can’t be produced anymore. Because there is no one to pay for.
(By the way, the problem is exacerbated by social media platforms. Because the algorithm there is optimised to keep people coming back for more, consumers no longer go directly to news sites.)
So AI is killing trustworthy information; it systematically produces more disinformation and less truth.
This is how the market works today.
The winners: Digital platforms, as well as the misinformation producers that flood the internet with cheap AI-generated content and profit from engagement.
The losers: Quality news, public-interest journalism, and the public that depends on them.
But democracy needs informed citizens, right?
So what to do?
We have to change the rules of the market.
As the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and his Columbia University colleague Maxim Ventura-Bolet have written in a paper called (The impact of AI and digital platforms on the information ecosystem) we don’t have to accept this situation.
But: The market will not self-correct because nobody is incentivised to act differently.
Only government intervention can stop the downward spiral.
Stiglitz and Ventura-Bolet argue that this should include
regulated platform accountability for content amplification,
enforced obligations to address coordinated disinformation campaigns, and
intellectual-property protection for news producers.
Today, the information landscape is becoming increasingly polluted, fragmented, and manipulative.
This is the bad news.
The good news: We can change for the better. With better rules for information markets.
Some will warn against interventions in free markets. Others simply term such helpful regulations a social market economy.
See you in democracy,
Johannes Eber
If you don’t want to read the Stiglitz & Ventura-Bolet paper, Meg Tapia has written about the paper here. Tapia is the managing director of the national security consulting firm Novexus and an expert associate at the Australian National University’s National Security College.