This is not a fatuously provocative question. I am not talking here about alternatives like those political systems which are proudly autocratic and do not apologise for their contempt for democracy, like the theocracies in the Middle East or China. Nor am I referring to those political systems whose guardians pretend to be democratic while rigging elections (any number of countries in Africa, Russia).
What I am referring to is sparked by the following alarming statistic about the amount of online content on the internet that is now AI-generated.
Rather than bore you with the statistics for each of TikTok, Facebook, Medium, LinkedIn, X and others, here is the summary:
Over 50% of everything you hear, read and see on the Internet is now AI-generated. In some cases, it is obvious and done openly (some images in videos). In other cases, it is not and in some cases the intent is malicious. We see it all the time – a friend reposting an entirely believable news item which turns out to be entirely fake. This used to be an occasional embarrassing oopsie. Not any longer. I have been deceived. Professional news organisations have been deceived. Even fact checkers have been deceived.
From Gaza to Ukraine, from the US to the EU to China, it is an epidemic. We are swimming in a sea of truthfulness and fakery that are pretty much indistinguishable from one another with nary an adjudicator in sight.
Which brings me back here – how then is democracy supposed to survive when it is based on the premise that citizens are properly informed about the issues on which they vote?
Tristan Harris is Executive Director of the Center for Humane Technology (CHT), a nonprofit organisation whose mission is to align technology with humanity’s best interests. Harris and co-founder Azer Raskin are probably the best-informed and most articulate voices around the threats, dangers and possible solutions to technology-fuelled misinformation.
“The last human election”
Harris does not mince his words. In March 2023, a mere four months after the release of ChatGPT he said this: “2024 will be the last human election”.
Ouch.
Călin Georgescu, an independent candidate in Romania, who barely registered in opinion polls in a general election in November 2024, won the first round with 23% of the vote. Prior to the election, polls estimated a 5th-place finish for Georgescu.
What Georgescu and his advisors had done was to carefully craft a TikTok presence with short clips showing him speaking “against the system,” promising to “free Romania from foreign control,” heavily relying on emotional imagery like children, old people, and national flags. These were sprinkled with half-truths and out-of-context data, and spread through fake endorsements, doctored videos showing imaginary support from foreign leaders, deepfakes, and manipulated polls showing him ahead when he wasn’t.
Authorities allege that the social media app TikTok gave Georgescu “preferential treatment,” and fake, Russian-made accounts bolstered Georgescu’s page into popularity, leading to increased engagement and content circulation. On December 6, 2024, Romania’s Constitutional Court invalidated the first round of the presidential elections, making Romania the first European country to cancel a presidential election due to the decisive influence of fake news.
Justice prevailed, right? No, not really – that story is unlikely to be repeated. AI manipulation of public opinion is now a lot more sophisticated than it was in November 2024. Subtle nudging will now be far more effective than the bludgeon of Georgescu’s TikTok.
Channels for deceit
AI has opened the floodgates, and the channels for deceit are endless.
I rather like democracy, it allows me to feel that I have a voice, however small. But is it actually the best system, now that it is likely that we are all going to be forming opinions based on input from technologies that are, to all intents and purposes, smarter and more manipulative that we can imagine? Or will all be doing someone else’s bidding, just as we do now with freely giving our attention to the addiction of social media and allowing others to profit from that?
Let’s take this thought and run with it. Singapore has built a modern, wealthy citizen-serving state without a free and fair election for its citizens. More pointedly China has lifted 600 million out of poverty without a free and fair vote for each. Not only that, but it is now producing, by some measures, the best and least expensive of just about everything we use in our daily lives. Its non-democratic system seems to be ascendent. The rest of us can only stare mute and bewildered at what they are achieving. All without a hint of Western-style democracy.
And it seems as though this spectacle has infected old-style liberal constitutional democracies. Some of the dark intellectual power behind the Trump administration now whispers without any cynicism or irony – “we’ve got this, we’ll set things right, we know what we are doing. You won’t ever need another election again”.
One wonders whether (or even when) the holders of these views will take the massive weapon that is AI and succeed in convincing everyone that they are right. And then one wonders, what if they are indeed right?
[Image: Element5 Digital on Unsplash]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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