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Daniel Yankelovich (1924-2017), an award-winning public opinion pollster, observed late in his career that government leaders, news organizations, and experts adhere to a dysfunctional, oversimplified understanding of public engagement. They put a premium on delivering information, often forgetting that when faced with hard choices, people make their decisions based on values and convictions more than information. This process takes time, sometimes decades. It requires conflict, dialogue, listening, growth, and deliberation. 

In our digital information age, speed wins. Faster and faster. Some people suppose that democracy and technical progress are incompatible because democracy is too slow. Controversies around artificial intelligence (AI) tend to focus on the rapid pace of its growth and scale, the rapidly increasing fears and hopes around its consequences, and the difficulties of governments, businesses, and citizens in coming to grips with it all, including the explosive buildout of data centers.

American historian Jill Lepore (author of These Truths: A history of the United States) has a new book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State (Liveright, 2026). It's not just about artificial intelligence, but a larger context which she calls the Artificial State. From the book: