If we are to avoid a crisis of democracy, we should learn from the Hebrews

Many commentators speak about emerging technologies in extreme terms, breathlessly predicting that artificial intelligence (AI) will grow so powerful that it becomes a kind of deity — with no use for its pitiful human creators.

This puts the cart before the horse. Long before the end of days, society will be transformed by digital systems of very impressive, but not world-ending, capability. These systems will be seamlessly distributed into the world around us, in objects, artefacts and architecture that we never previously saw as “technology”. They will quietly gather data about every aspect of our lives — our thoughts, fears, and desires — giving them a window into the human soul that no king or priest could ever have claimed.

Such technologies, currently in their infancy, are already being used for a variety of political purposes, not all of them benign. In my book, Future Politics, I explore their impact on power, freedom and justice — but, with the year just passed, it is useful to start with democracy.

In the short time it has been with us, digital technology has transformed the way we think and speak about politics — in short, the way we deliberate.

A community deliberates when it discusses issues in order to find solutions that can be accepted by all, or most, reasonable people. In an ideal deliberation, everyone would have equal chance to participate on equal terms. The reality, of course, is less perfect: deliberation happens at kitchen tables and water coolers, in mosques and synagogues, in schools and universities — any time we get together and discuss the issues of the day.

Deliberation is critical for the health of any democracy. It’s how we pool our knowledge and information in order to reach the best possible decisions. It helps us to see both sides of each issue, creating the potential for compromise. It exposes those who pursue their own self-interest at the expense of others. And it’s the only way we can manage the reasonable moral disagreements that inevitably arise in communities numbering millions of people.

In the last century, the process of deliberation was led by the mass media, which set the news agenda, laid out the issues of the day, and presented alternative arguments (with more or less balance, depending on the outlet). In our time, deliberation increasingly takes place on online platforms owned and moderated by tech firms. 

The internet was expected to herald a golden age of deliberation. While citizens in the past had passively accepted their political cues from the mass media, it was hoped that in the future they would be their own news-gatherers and broadcasters. What’s more, political dishonesty would become absurd in a world where falsehoods could be swiftly debunked using trustworthy online resources available to all.

Obviously, it has not quite worked out that way. Political discourse is more divided and shallow than ever, and many of the problems have been caused or exacerbated by tech. 

First, there’s the problem of polarisation: by and large we use social media to talk to those we like, and we read news that confirms our beliefs. Different political tribes live in different informational universes. In the early days, this was caused by individuals selecting only the online information streams they wanted — the so-called Daily Me — but increasingly it is the result of algorithms that select information for us based on our perceived preferences. 

Then there is the problem of falsity: debate increasingly takes place on the basis of assumptions that are demonstrably untrue.

The internet has enabled the rapid dissemination — including by hostile foreign powers — of falsehoods which look and sound inherently plausible. 

In the final three months of the 2016 US Presidential campaign, each of the top 20 fake new stories on Facebook generated more shares, reactions and comments than the top 20 stories from the major news outlets combined. A poll in December 2016 found that 75 per cent of those who saw fake news headlines believed them to be true.

Increasingly, the work of spreading falsehoods is being done by AI ‘bots’ masquerading as humans on social media.

So it is that we are frequently exposed to messages that are both partisan and false, enveloping us ever-deeper in our own tribal universes. And the more time we spend around people or information that reinforce our views, the more extremely we come to hold those views. In turn, the more partisan we become, the less we care for the truth of what we read — so long as it reinforces our pre-existing prejudices. Deliberation in such an environment is frequently irrational and generally toxic.

This is not a totally new phenomenon. Leon Roth (1896-1963), who founded the Department of Philosophy at the Hebrew University, described “the methods of the old false prophet” as “the manipulation of fact, the histrionic use of language, the endless self-praise, the merciless repetitions”. He could have been talking about Donald Trump on Twitter, or the Corbynite cultists who prowl the darker corners of the web.

The deeper issue, however, is new and important. Once again, we have hardly any visibility of the forces that are transforming the way we live together, still less any control over them.

The great psychologist Erich Fromm, who left Frankfurt in the 1930s, saw that true freedom in the modern world can be terrifying, even unbearable. In the build-up to the Second World War, millions “were as eager to surrender their freedom as their fathers were to fight for it; that instead of wanting freedom, they sought for ways of escape from it.” Will historians say that we let our democracy deteriorate too easily? Are we, like the Hebrews of the Old Testament, allowing politics to become the instrument of unseen powers beyond our control?

The task of this generation is to prevent that from happening.  

Jamie Susskind is a barrister and a past Fellow of Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Centre for Internet and Society. His book, Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech is out now