The Rule of Midwits, One Year Later

The New York Times Explicitly Advocates for Oligarchy

The short/long post order is reversed this week for reasons that will be clear. Part 1 of my review of The True Believer by Eric Hoffer will be released this Friday.

Today is the one-year anniversary of my first viral article:

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/rule-of-midwits

In my reflection I recalled that most of my explicit predictions were correct and if anything, I underestimated the strength of my claims. I think that this article exemplifies this. Two days ago, the New York Times published this article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/15/opinion/ai-chatgpt-lobbying-democracy.html

Typically, “lobbying=democracy” is not a connection that is made explicitly. It has to be inferred by the actions of politicians and the rhetoric of partisan journalists. On the more explicit side is something like Terry McAuliffe’s gaffe that “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what to teach.” This type of rhetoric is typical of the New York Times, whose job is policing what truths cannot be shared and what lies must be shared among liberals and progressives. In the words of a friend of the podcast, its job is to speak power to truth. 

Keeping this in mind, the case that lobbying=democracy is a fairly difficult case to make subtly to Democrats, who do have a history of resisting lobbying and dark money, at least in rhetoric. So, I guess the NYT just decided to run a piece to make it in the least subtle way possible. 

a far greater threat looms: artificial intelligence replacing humans in the democratic processes — not through voting, but through lobbying.

…

an A.I. system with the sophistication of ChatGPT but trained on relevant data could selectively target key legislators and influencers to identify the weakest points in the policymaking system and ruthlessly exploit them through direct communication, public relations campaigns, horse trading or other points of leverage.

When we humans do these things, we call it lobbying. Successful agents in this sphere pair precision message writing with smart targeting strategies. Right now, the only thing stopping a ChatGPT-equipped lobbyist from executing something resembling a rhetorical drone warfare campaign is a lack of precision targeting.

At this point, everyone should be clear about what is happening. The oligarchs are circling the wagon, and they are doing so not in the Wall Street Journal but in the New York Times. Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang had a line where he said “the people need their own lobbyist in DC”. According to the New York Times, that would be a threat to ‘democracy’. 

It’s interesting to me that I wrote this before being exposed to the political theory right or the Italian Elite school at all. I came to these conclusions from an essentially empirical model of the world with little understanding of theory. I’m not sure if that helped or hurt it. I think it definitely hurt it rhetorically, but I mean as an explanatory model.

Here is a long block quote by me, from the Tablet piece:

This model helps explain how left-wing ideology and incumbent institutions have become almost synonymous, just as Democratic politicians and media figures have become closely associated with ideas like “bureaucracy” and “stagnation.” And in a sanitized political bubble like this one, there is very little need to engage in formal democracy. Sure, there are primaries and elections every couple of years, but these tend to make up a fraction of a bureaucrat, professor, NGO staffer, think-tanker, or journalist’s time. Instead, their engagements with “democracy” are mostly relational—filling out paperwork, putting arguments in writing, arranging meetings, and so on. Their idea of democracy is shaped not by the democratic process itself (i.e., public deliberation), but by feedback from bureaucracy, an often artificial and unnecessary appendage of democracy. Consequently, when movements push policy that circumvents this appendage, they are actually completely right to perceive it as an existential threat to their way of life. 

In general, this is a reason to be optimistic about LLMs. Many of the biological differences leading to rule by left-oligarchs are being levelled by technology. Ironically, the most genuinely egalitarian development in recent years is what will reduce their power. This makes sense to anyone who recognizes that what they advocate for is, in reality, not egalitarianism but an anti-meritocratic oligarchy. This does not mean that technology is automatically going to save us. But it does help, especially on the margins.

P.S. I discuss these factors and more about AI with Sam Hammond