Article by Thomas B. Edsall: “Sixteen years ago, Peter Thiel, the multibillionaire co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, was strikingly prescient. Speaking at the 2010 Libertopia conference in San Diego, Thiel, who would go on to bankroll JD Vance’s entry into politics, told the gathering:
We could never win an election on getting certain things because we were in such a small minority, but maybe you could actually unilaterally change the world without having to constantly convince people and beg people and plead with people who are never going to agree with you through technological means, and this is where I think technology is this incredible alternative to politics.
Sometime in the not-too-distant future, Thiel and his tech allies may well have no need to win an election to exert control of the United States and other nations.
As artificial intelligence — led by Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI and Anthropic — drives to become the nation’s dominant industry, one of the most pressing questions is how technology is affecting, if not supplanting, politics, potentially diminishing the centrality of elections.
Even more important: Will A.I. continue to increase the concentration of market, political and cultural power, undermining democratic control of the economic and social order? To what degree will A.I. exacerbate inequality?
And will A.I., empowered to operate beyond the reach of public institutions and the electorate, in effect transfer government control and regulatory authority to private corporations, political cadres or both?..(More)”.
