AI and its potential impact on liberal democracy
Since 1992, Francis Fukuyama has often been called upon to explain how his prediction of the definitive dominance of the liberal democracy model after the fall of communism has been tested by events – by the internal convulsions in Western democracies and by the apparent success of authoritarian regimes such as China. But his theory has never lost its appeal. It has never ceased to be a field of debate in contemporary political thought.
In an interview with Kathimerini, the Stanford University professor, political scientist, political economist, international relations scholar and writer discussed the challenges facing authoritarian states and their “legitimacy” in the modern world, the potential impact of new technologies such as artificial intelligence on liberal democracies, and their possible impact on the strength of illiberal regimes.
According to Professor Fukuyama, “there is a wide variety of authoritarian states, and the problems they face really differ from one to another. If you look at the two big ones, that is China and Russia, they have a couple of similar problems concerning, among other things, decision-making. In an authoritarian state, you have concentrated power in a single individual, Vladimir Putin in Russia’s case or Xi Jinping in China’s. And you have eliminated a lot of the checks and balances that exist in a liberal democracy that limit the ruler’s authority. And as a result, the leader is able to make decisions simply on his own that have not been vetted by other people that do not get widespread support.
“In the last year, we have seen a couple of examples of that. One big one is the decision to invade Ukraine, which seems to have been taken by Putin all by himself, and the second was China’s zero-Covid policy. And so, there is a reason why we want to restrict the authority of any one individual in a democratic political system.
‘We are moving into a period where you are able to do deepfakes in which you can simulate videos of people speaking… that obviously is going to do a lot to undermine people’s trust in anything that they see digitally’
“Another problem has to do with legitimacy. Many authoritarian states look like they are very strong up until the moment that they collapse. Iran, for example, since the killing of Mahsa Amini last year, has seen really a large part of its population reject the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic as a whole. They are not rejecting a particular policy, but they really want the regime to go. And although [the regime has] been successful in holding on to power, [it is] weakened very dramatically by the fact that women, in particular, do not buy into that form of patriarchal government.
“Another problem that traces in the authoritarian states has to do with succession, that in many authoritarian regimes you do not have a clear mechanism of succession. This is coming up now with Putin because if Putin were to be deposed or died in office or somehow lose power, we have no idea who is going to rule Russia after that. And I think the Russians themselves have no idea who is going to rule Russia.”
Among the dominant views in Fukuyama’s works is the belief that liberal democracy is the ultimate form of government. But how does he explain the instability that has plagued the strongest democracies, such as the US and the UK, in recent years, which seem locked in a spiral of successive crises? As he states: “We have been in the midst of a democratic recession now for almost 20 years. This is something that the Freedom House organization, which assesses every year the freedom in the world, made pretty clear, that democracy has been set back in aggregate now for almost two decades. And it is also a qualitative matter because the world’s two largest democracies, India and the United States, have also seen the rise of populist politicians that have undermined the rule of law in both cases. So, we are going through a period of setback right now that is quite different from the situation that we saw when the number of democracies was expanding in the late 1980s and 1990s.”
We ask Fukuyama if the new technological tools, such as artificial intelligence, will strengthen authoritarian regimes or help control them. “It is impossible to know,” he replies. “When the internet first became widely available in the 1990s, many people, myself included, thought that the technology would be very good for democracy because information is power. And it is still the case that as a mobilizational tool, the internet is very useful. On the other hand, there are obviously big problems because authoritarian actors have figured out how to use the internet. China uses the internet now to monitor the behavior of its citizens.
“The big question right now that everybody is asking is what the effect of artificial intelligence will be. I think we have already seen some downsides to it because that is what permits targeted advertising and the use of data to get to individuals and manipulate their behavior. But on the other hand, it could lead to big efficiencies. It could actually be complementary to the skills that existing workers have and therefore, you know, increase employment.
“Now, we are moving into a period where you are able to do deepfakes in which you can simulate videos of people speaking. And so, you can get politicians on video saying things that they actually never said. And I think in the next few years, this is going to become increasingly common. And that obviously is going to do a lot to undermine people’s trust in anything that they see digitally. We have already seen an erosion of trust because of the rise of social media and the internet. So that is one clear downside.”
Knowing that the renowned American philosopher is a devotee of ancient Greek intellectuals, we turned our discussion to the teachings of the ancient Greeks on the foundations of states and the impact of Greek thought on political science.
“I think that the ancient Greeks taught us something in a way broader than just about democracy. They established a philosophical method in which you had rational questioning of the most fundamental issues that human beings face. Like what is the best way to live? What is the most just form of government? And, you know, ancient Athens had a democracy very early on, and that was an inspiration to later democracies. But there is a much broader impact that the ancients had on the very possibility of rational discourse that laid the grounds for the modern Enlightenment, after the Renaissance, the use of philosophy and reason to understand the world. And so, all these are critical contributions that were made by the ancient Greeks.”
In his concluding remarks, Fukuyama gave a word of advice for young scientists who would like to follow in his footsteps. “Universities do not create the proper incentives to think broadly about things. If you want to become an academic, you have to focus on very narrow issues and you have to be very methodological. That is not the path that I chose. But I was lucky in being able to do what I did partly because of the historical period I was living in and partly because of just issues of timing. In general, it is important for young people to understand that they need to think about big questions as well as the specific skills that they are going to use as they follow their careers and that therefore a liberal education, meaning the basic education in humanistic sciences, remains the core of anybody’s necessary education.”
