CAN DEMOCRACY SURVIVE AI?

Every previous technological revolution - from the printing press and railroads to broadcast media - destabilised politics and compelled the emergence of new norms and institutions that eventually restored balance between openness and stability. The question is whether democracies can adapt once again, and in time, before AI writes them out of the script

- Ian Bremmer

Digital technology was supposed to disperse power. Early internet visionaries hoped that the revolution they were unleashing would empower individuals to free themselves from ignorance, poverty, and tyranny. And for awhile, at least, it did. But today, ever-smarter algorithms increasingly predict and shape our every choice, enabling unprecedentedly effective forms of centralised, unaccountable surveillance and control.

That means the coming AI revolution may render closed political systems more stable than open ones. In an age of rapid change, transparency, pluralism, checks and balances, and other key democratic features could prove to be liabilities. Could the openness that long gave democracies their edge become the cause of their undoing?

Two decades ago, I sketched a “J-curve” to illustrate the link between a country’s openness and its stability. My argument, in a nutshell, was that while mature democracies are stable because they are open, and consolidated autocracies are stable because they are closed, countries stuck in the messy middle (the nadir of the “J”) are more likely to crack under stress.