AI will drive the societies of the future. Will the governed consent?

Western democracies are confronted with collapsing trust in their governments and surging nationalist movements. These phenomena have a particularly cruel timing, occurring contemporaneously with the rise of complex, global problems that urgently require coordinated, collective action. As the world becomes increasingly complicated and interconnected, the decisions of governments, corporations, and large institutions have become less accessible to the average citizen. Whether in relation to data privacy, climate change, or automation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, citizens are being asked to accept decisions made by experts whose knowledge they can't match or evaluate. The average citizen, whose voice and consent was once proclaimed as essential to the functioning of democracy and legitimized political power, is now being asked to yield more authority to experts.