The Atlantic’s article “Why Technology Favors Tyranny” explained how artificial intelligence has the potential to erode democracy. The article suggests that our growing reliance upon technology will result in a centralization of power. This will allow dictatorships to thrive with a vast amount of data. Artificial Intelligence will only continue to grow and eventually outpace job creation. This is an area of politics that we have yet to address. Lesser forms of artificial intelligence and technology in general have already begun to create job loss within more labor intensive fields. Donald Trump was able to exploit this job loss by appealing to these citizens and their fears. I think it is important to educate our citizens on the vast power that machine engines such as Google and Facebook have. We have become reliant upon these corporations and in return they have a large amount of our personal data.

This is not to say that these machines are going to on day rise up against us, but this increase in artificial intelligence and date collection does have the potential to alter our democratic political process. Artificial Intelligence has the ability to recognize and target citizens fears, interests, and prejudices. This allows them to warp the information that they are exposed to and in return re enforce or alter their beliefs. When you centralize a vast amount of data it limits the diversity of opinion. We must counteract this by finding ways to prevent too much data from being concentrated in too few hands. We also have to recognize the fact that artificial intelligence has the potential for vast progress, so it will only continue to be developed. However we must make the effort to also put time and energy into developing human consciousness and maintain democratic values.