Agency in an AI Avalanche: Education for Citizen Empowerment

Even before the global pandemic of COVID-19 dramatized the vulnerability of the world’s systems of collective action and decision-making, apocalyptic warnings abounded about democracy’s future. “We are entering the age of strong men,” says the conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks. “In America the basic fabric of civic self-government seems to be eroding following the loss of faith in democratic ideals.” The left wing intellectual Samuel Freeman sees relevance for Frankfurt School pessimism, holding that “capitalist consumer culture makes emancipation impossible.” Pankaj Mishra in Age of Anger sees a metastasizing rage against modernity. “Existential resentment ... [is] caused by an intense mix of envy and sense of humiliation and powerlessness ... as it lingers and deepens [it] poisons civil society and undermines political liberty and is presently making for a global turn to authoritarianism.” In such alarms, education is missing as either a contributor to democracy’s problems or a way to address them. In contrast, the American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey saw education as critical to democratic society and democracy as central to the educational enterprise. “It is the main business of the family and the