Here’s a debate about whether generative AI threatens the survival of key civic institutions – followed by a conversation with RPS Coach about these issues that may surprise you.
Woodrow Hartzog and Jessica M. Silbey wrote How AI Destroys Institutions. Here’s the abstract.
Civic institutions—the rule of law, universities, and a free press—are the backbone of democratic life. They are the mechanisms through which complex societies encourage cooperation and stability, while also adapting to changing circumstances. The real superpower of institutions is their ability to evolve and adapt within a hierarchy of authority and a framework for roles and rules while maintaining legitimacy in the knowledge produced and the actions taken. Purpose-driven institutions built around transparency, cooperation, and accountability empower individuals to take intellectual risks and challenge the status quo. This happens through the machinations of interpersonal relationships within those institutions, which broaden perspectives and strengthen shared commitment to civic goals.
Unfortunately, the affordances of AI systems extinguish these institutional features at every turn. In this essay, we make one simple point: AI systems are built to function in ways that degrade and are likely to destroy our crucial civic institutions. The affordances of AI systems have the effect of eroding expertise, short-circuiting decision-making, and isolating people from each other. These systems are anathema to the kind of evolution, transparency, cooperation, and accountability that give vital institutions their purpose and sustainability. In short, current AI systems are a death sentence for civic institutions, and we should treat them as such.
Andrew Perlman wrote A Response to “How AI Destroys Institutions.” Here’s the abstract:
In “How AI Destroys Institutions,” Professors Woodrow Hartzog and Jessica Silbey argue that Generative AI (GenAI) systems—by their very design—undermine expertise, short-circuit decision-making, and isolate humans from one another. These aren’t bugs to be fixed with better governance. They’re features, baked into the technology’s core affordances. The conclusion is stark: GenAI constitutes “a death sentence for civic institutions,” like higher education, the rule of law, journalism, and democracy itself.
Hartzog and Silbey offer a provocative argument. In this response, I focus on one methodological issue that would sharpen their analysis and make the likely institutional effects appear more contingent: the baseline question—relative to what?
Every claim about GenAI’s destructive effects implicitly invokes a baseline. GenAI destroys institutions compared to… what? They never quite say, and the ambiguity does a lot of work.
The unstated comparison seems to be institutions as they ought to function: repositories of legitimate knowledge, sites of transparent deliberation, communities bound by shared purpose. The rule of law as guarantor of accountability. Universities as engines of free inquiry. Journalism as democracy’s watchdog. These are noble aspirations. They’re also not how these institutions operate in practice.
This isn’t a minor oversight. The “relative to what” problem pervades the analysis of each institution, with the flagged risks either overstated or failing to recognize potential benefits to these institutions from the use of GenAI. Although Hartzog and Silbey do recognize that our institutions are currently fragile and sometimes ineffective, their analysis would be strengthened by engaging more directly with the extent of those problems—and by analyzing when GenAI might mitigate rather than worsen them.
The reality is that any predictions about GenAI’s institutional impact—whether a “death sentence” or utopia—are simplifications. The future is much likely to unfold in ways that we cannot even begin to imagine.
RPS Coach and I chatted about these issues, starting with a summary of both articles and an assessment of their strengths and weaknesses.
Take a look.
