This is an interesting take that I don't think I have come across before. Thanks. Would you happen to have any further reading material on this topic either by yourself or others?
James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State is a useful lens here. Scott argues that modern states flattened human complexity into legible categories so they could govern: surnames, maps, censuses, standardized occupations. You lose a lot of nuance, but in theory the trade-off is that the state can then build institutions that serve the public.
AI feels like a more extreme version of that flattening, but without the civic purpose that justified it. You end up with legibility without legitimacy. That’s the part I think we don’t have a good framework for yet.
AI feels like a more extreme version of that flattening, but without the civic purpose that justified it. You end up with legibility without legitimacy. That’s the part I think we don’t have a good framework for yet.