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In 1988, James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told a U.S. Senate committee: “The greenhouse effect has been discovered and it is changing our climate.” Thirty-five years later, the U.S. government finally tried to control the Take action. The political trajectory of artificial intelligence is similar. Alan Turing, the scientist who coined the concept of artificial intelligence, predicted in 1951: “At some stage . . . we should expect machines to take control.” Only now has the concept entered mainstream political debate.
In short, democracies either act too late or act quickly but foolishly. This is sub-optimal, especially when the pace of life accelerates. Artificial intelligence is improving almost every week, and viruses can travel across the globe on airplanes. Some people think the solution is dictatorship. It is true that dictators can act quickly, but they usually act in their own self-interest. Overall, they have achieved even worse long-term outcomes than democracies. So how do we make democracy faster and smarter? Let’s start with how they usually handle problems:
Stage 1: Only a few experts realize there is a problem. Take, for example, two crises that worsened from the 1980s to the 2000s: climate change and income inequality. Al Gore is one of the mainstream politicians who has made a splash on climate issues in recent decades, but he is often dismissed as a weirdo. Hardly any successful politician mentioned inequality.
In the 2000s, new startups like Facebook and Uber began changing society before many politicians had heard of them. A 2017 academic paper introducing the model behind ChatGPT also attracted no attention.
Phase 2: Ignorant public debate dominated by politicians, journalists and assorted ill-informed makers. This is the focus of the current artificial intelligence debate. At this stage, many people still deny that this problem exists. Sometimes people take hasty actions in times of ignorance. This is what happened when the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and when the British voted to leave the EU.
Phase 3: Long-term skills improvement in public debate. This only started after the US invasion and Brexit. Once a decision is made, policymakers eventually begin to absorb information they should have known beforehand, such as Afghan society, or the trade-offs between free movement and doing business with Europe. This collective upskilling often takes decades.
Stage 4: Reaching complex majority agreement on what should be done. Almost all political decision-makers are now aware of the greenhouse effect. That doesn’t mean they’ll take action—business interests or self-serving voters might stop them—but it’s a crucial first step. However, the fourth phase came too late. If only the states had started the energy transition as early as 1988.
So how do democracies do away with stages two and three? How do they jump from expert awareness directly to informed action? The response to Covid-19 is a good case study. It is crucial that politicians allow experts to dominate the debate from the outset. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has little information, often introduces his scientific advisers at epidemic news conferences and has them address the public. Experts are not always right, but they are more correct than ignorant people. They are the smartest element in a stupid system.
Some are dismissive of coronavirus expertise, but most embrace it. Of course, decisions still need to be made by elected politicians rather than experts, but they are not acting in ignorance. So we went from life-saving lockdowns to vaccine rollout in nine months. To institutionalize such rapid responses, we need to foreground expertise in political debates. In fact, we need experts to tell us what they think our political debates should be about.
This will require them to improve their communication skills. National broadcasters must prioritize their views and marginalize the ignorant. We need better expert mechanisms to guide government thinking. One model is the influential Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy, composed of professors who advise the government on strategic issues. After all, experts can think longer term than elected politicians or companies reporting quarterly financial performance.
Another promising model is the citizens’ assembly. When Ireland decided whether to legalize abortion, it established a parliament of 99 ordinary people. They heard from 25 experts and reviewed 300 submissions from the public and interest groups. The convention ultimately recommended legalization. In 2018, a national referendum approved the proposal.
We can speed up political time.
Follow Simon on X @coopersimon and send him an email to simon.kuper@ft.com
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