Lepore, Jill. “How We the People Lost Control of Our Lives and How We Can Get It Back.” The New York Times, 17 Sept. 2025, www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/opinion/altman-ai-constiutional-convention.html.
In her New York Times article, Jill Lepore discusses AI in relation to American governmental processes and the potential of the American people to have more of a say in the creation of legislation surrounding AI. She talks about the original constitution and the processes around its creation, claiming that even those who were unable to vote at the time (poor white men, free and enslaved black men, women) still impacted the constitutional process through petitions, mobs, and crowds. She credits these sort of gatherings with the inclusion of rights. The most important point that Lepore tries to make is that the people themselves had reserved the right to alter the government by amendments, but the traditions of conventions to form and adopt these amendments have been abandoned; with the most recent one being held in the late 1980s. She follows up her democratic discussion with a brief but powerful warning of democracy’s destruction, should we continue to allow the AI tech executives to act as they are.
This article was interesting because of its focus on America’s history with democratic systems, and the influence of the general public on constitutional legislation and amendments; leading to the question of using those same systems to address the current lack of legalese around AI. She also went on to address the dangers of allowing these prominent tech executives to work outside and against the law, and the potential of democracy to be replaced by a dependence on these machines.
Leave a Reply