Essay by Andrew Sorota: “…But a quieter danger lies in wait, one that may ultimately prove more corrosive to the human spirit than any killer robot or bioweapon. The risk is that we will come to rely on AI not merely to assist us but to decide for us, surrendering ever larger portions of collective judgment to systems that, by design, cannot acknowledge our dignity.
The tragedy is that we are culturally prepared for such abdication. Our political institutions already depend on what might be called a “paradigm of deference,” in which ordinary citizens are invited to voice preferences episodically — through ballots every few years — while day-to-day decisions are made by elected officials, regulators and technical experts.
Many citizens have even come to defer their civic role entirely by abstaining from voting, whether for symbolic meaning or due to sheer apathy. AI slots neatly into this architecture, promising to supercharge the convenience of deferring while further distancing individuals from the levers of power.
Modern representative democracy itself emerged in the 18th century as a solution to the logistical impossibility of assembling the entire citizenry in one place; it scaled the ancient city-state to the continental republic. That solution carried a price: The experience of direct civic agency was replaced by periodic, symbolic acts of consent. Between elections, citizens mostly observe from the sidelines. Legislative committees craft statutes, administrative agencies draft rules, central banks decide the price of money — all with limited direct public involvement.
This arrangement has normalized an expectation that complex questions belong to specialists. In many domains, that reflex is sensible — neurosurgeons really should make neurosurgical calls. But it also primes us to cede judgment even where the stakes are fundamentally moral or distributive. The democratic story we tell ourselves — that sovereignty rests with the people — persists, but the lived reality is an elaborate hierarchy of custodians. Many citizens have internalized that gap as inevitable…(More)”.
