If AI Thinks for Us, Democracy Will Suffer

Whereas the internet buried us in information, AI enables us to outsource analysis altogether. But when it comes to grappling with humanity’s most important questions, we must resist the temptation and recognize that we all have a duty—to each other and to ourselves—to keep “showing up.” CHICAGO—Sometime in the 18th century, the Enlightenment settled a contentious, centuries-old question: Where does knowledge come from? For millennia, many people had pointed to God. But the early modern period brought a new consensus, namely that knowledge comes from human scientists working at the edge of what is known, armed with observation, mathematics, experimentation, and logic.