Jill Lepore warns AI could create 'artificial state' threatening democracy
Technology
Harvard historian Jill Lepore is sounding the alarm about an "artificial state" where AI lets corporations make decisions instead of citizens.
On The New York Times' "Hard Fork" podcast, she explained this shift could put democracy at risk by giving too much control to machines and powerful elites.
Lepore's book links AI to isolation
Lepore's upcoming book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, digs into how AI tools like ChatGPT can influence voters and how social media shapes what we see.
She worries this tech-driven world makes us more isolated and weakens communities.
Lepore also called out Silicon Valley for pushing the idea that AI is unstoppable, reminding us that similar promises were made about the internet, but those didn't always protect democracy either.