The Enlightenment Was Wrong

Dmytro Kuleba, currently Ukraine’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, sat on a panel at Davos’s 2024 World Economic Forum where he said, “The Enlightenment was wrong when it said, responding to Gutenberg’s 1440 AD innovation, ‘the more the common man is exposed to information and opinion, the more educated he will become and the better reasoned his choices will be.’”

After printing came radio, then television, then internet search and then social platforms, all of which has proved to the world the fundamental assumption of the Enlightenment was wrong. People have access to unprecedented quantities of information and opinion, but they have continued to accede to and to make “stupid, unreasoned choices.”

Today’s internet Search does indeed continue to provide choice. The first page of a search may be distorted somewhat by prepaid influence, but one can continue, deeper down and for better or worse, to find other opinions and arrive at choices.

But now, on top of the longstanding problem of choice fallibility, a new social dynamic is emerging. Through built-up relationships with the Personal Assistant, AI appears likely to replace hapless exposure to opinion diversity with opinion rigidity. The advice and opinion of one’s trusted Personal Assistant, coupled as it will be to Universal Intelligence, is what soon will carry a near total weight with human choices and preferences. The Single Opinion, Ukraine’s Kuleba foresees, will become a further and perhaps much deeper problem in political culture.

For a discussion of this and the succeeding Post with Inflection AI’s Pi, click here.