AI is exploiting widespread discredit

Institutions are often taken for granted until people need them most. Yet the United Nations, Congress, the courts and the press have lost credibility during a period of uncertainty that some analysts see as a civilizational crisis.

The article contrasts today’s situation with the 2008 financial crisis, when institutions, despite their flaws, helped channel the turmoil. Now, winds of change are gradually wearing those institutions down. Technology influences every front, and the logic of algorithms could eclipse the values that much of the Western world formally embraced and pursued over the past two centuries.

The uncertainty has produced sharply different forecasts. Elon Musk believes artificial intelligence will free people from work and provide them with everything they need. Yuval Noah Harari warns that within 10 years AI could replace humans in decision-making and take control of the world, unless institutions act now to stop the development of systems far more powerful than human intelligence. A journalist from The Economist recently explored that contrast in video interviews with both men.

The article frames the moment as a quiet struggle between two forces. One appears unstoppable, but the outcome remains uncertain. Institutions could continue their decline as algorithms advance, or they could shake off their inertia and recover the purpose for which they were created.

That purpose is to represent people and communities in confronting conflicts and problems that require broad debate and major agreements. But democracies face a severe crisis of representation: people no longer trust those given the mandate to represent them and instead choose to raise their own voices, or their own cries, in the public square.