To combat the 'Artificial State,' Jill Lepore says to look to science fiction

0:00Hey, it's Emperors Book of the Day, I'm Andrew Limbong. Today's interview paints a pretty bleak picture as to where we're at now, as a country, as a society, as a people. It's with the historian Jill Lapor, whose new book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, examines who actually has the reigns of power. She argues that our liberal democracy has already been replaced by something else, by corporations and machines. And after she finishes painting that bleak picture, Emperors Michelle Martin asks Lapor, well, what can we do about it? And I'll let her enter that after the break. On all of it with me, Alison Stewart will talk about art, music, theater, literature, history, food, well, all of it. Here in-depth, insightful interviews with authors like Zadie Smith, musicians like Steve Earl, actors like Kate Winslet and Beyond.

1:00That's all of it, available wherever you get your podcasts. Instead of scrolling mindlessly, engage mindfully with the NPR app, with a mix of on-demand news, stories from the station and your favorite podcast, you can relax without shutting off your brain, download the NPR app today. Normally, an historian like Jill Lapor writes about the past, in her case, best-selling prize-winning histories about politics and the law. But Lapor sees a real and compelling danger in an inescapable phenomenon of the present, one which she says compelled her to write her latest book. It's called The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State. And Jill Lapor is here to tell us what that is. Good morning. Thank you so much for joining us. Hey, good morning. Thanks for having me. So everybody's heard by this time about artificial intelligence, but what is the artificial state? It's the successor state to a liberal democracy, right? It kind of a new kind of state that is fast emerging in which public discourses owned

2:06by and controlled by privately owned corporations. And much of the functions of nation states are being taken over by corporations and run by machinery. So it's essentially by machine instead of government by consent. And you're saying that this has really already happened to some degree? I think it's very much underway. And what I wanted to do in writing the book was to name it because I think it's kind of baffling. Like, what? People wake up and read the newspaper and say, what is actually going on? And I think having a name for what's going on is maybe helpful. You say that their effects, and this is your main focus here, their effects on political discourse, representative democracy, and constitutional government have been almost wholly maligned. You say that liberal democratic states make citizens the artificial state makes trolls. So tell us why it is that you say that. You know, people that have been hawking innovations in computer technology since the 1980s have been really interested in making promises that every new step in the evolution of these

3:11technologies would abet democracy. And then there's the same promise now with artificial intelligence, right? It's that it will abet democracy. But like, we actually take stock historically using quantitative evidence and inspecting the studies of political theorists about democratic erosion, especially since the era of social media, we really see abundant evidence across the world of the degree to which these tools have undermined democracy and have aided and abetted the rise of authoritarianism around the world. And what about places around the world where there was never a particularly robust kind of local news ecosystem? What what there? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting the decay, the democratic backsliding that is among the effects of social media is much more severe in healthy democratic societies, right? Then in places that just don't have a democratic infrastructure, there's less, less to unravel.

4:13The strong impression I get from your book is that you actually think this is intentional. Is that accurate? So, and not exactly. So I think most of it happened by accident. Like most of these things are perfect. Like think about the polling example, right? Like, oh, well, George Gallup used to send people out to knock on doors. Then it became a little more efficient once more Americans had phones to do that on the phone, right? Like, that seems just like that's harmless. That's not like malign. But I think once you get into the 21st century by the 2010s, the kind of cultish worship that the press offered up to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, those guys really turned libertarian for one thing. There's a big strain of libertarianism in Silicon Valley, but they also came to believe that their power as corporate titans was above that of the nation state. They began to talk about themselves in these extraordinary terms and to see themselves as unaccountable to any government. Not just because of their libertarian, but because of that kind of like techno messianism,

5:16like just that they were gods among us, that they controlled the future of the planet. You say, this is why I say that you suggest that this is intentional. You say, if the executives in charge of the corporations building the infrastructure of the artificial state had once been blind to the social and political problems they were causing, they eventually came to see at least some of those harms. These did not deter them. You quote, for example, Peter Tiel saying, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. Well, what about free will? Do people, people don't have to engage with these systems. They don't have to be on Facebook. No, we don't have to. I think you see an increasing tech backlash where people are uncomfortable using them. I think the public opinion polling is upwards of 70% of Americans are opposed to data centers, and don't think that AI will bring anything good to their lives. There's a lot of discomfort with it, and yet our entire economy has been turned upside

6:17down in order to advance it. So the book is titled The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, and you argue that other forms of malign governance can be brought down. So what's the plan here, Professor LePore? Yeah, don't go for the historians when you need the pitchforks. Like, I only have his pencils. You know, I just think it's really useful to think about actually literature. Science fiction is filled with what I call the parable of the artificial state. Like going back to the 1860s, people imagine, oh, one day, if the machines get really good and get more powerful and become intelligent, they could replace government, and then we'd be ruled by machines and what would we do. But there are also stories within that world of science fiction of successful defeating. Like people have to stand up and say, I am not just a piece of data. I am a voter. I am a citizen. I get to decide.

7:18People who own the machines don't get to decide. Democratic deliberation is what will save this country and any other democracy, and that has to be face to face. And it has to be people sitting down in a room together, and it has to be... It has to involve a commitment to getting better information, getting information from reputed journalists and news organizations, and committing to doing the work of imagining a different future for our democracy than one in which we are ruled by the three enrichment on the planet. That is Jill Laporte. She's the author of the Rise and Fall of the Artificial State. Professor Jill Laporte, thanks so much for talking with me. Thanks so much, Michelle. This was a lot of fun. I haven't seen my son since 2012. This is Deborah Tice. The disappearance of her son, Austin, is one of the biggest missing person cases in the

8:20world. What do you want from me? Why should I have the mystery? I know that my son is somewhere alive. Listen to Where is Austin Tice from MPR's Embedded and BBC Radio 4 on the MPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This week on Weight Weight Don't Tell Me We Talk With Our Panel, Mo Raka, Shane Torres, and any rower to about the latest trend in dating, smelling bad on purpose. This Firmone Maxing is just not bathing. Yes. So this is like when Uber came out and they're like, it's not taxi, it's right, chair. Don't miss our full conversation in the rest of our games. Listen to The Weight Weight Don't Tell Me Podcast and the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.