Speaker: Sean Donahue

Epistocracy is rule by whoever is more likely than others to make correct decisions. AI epistocracy is rule by an artificial intelligence that is more likely than humans to make correct decisions. While various objections have been made against epistocracy, the most compelling do not apply to AI epistocracy. This is because epistocracy’s critics have assumed it is a political regime involving human rule. It would be good to have a fundamental objection to epistocracy, one that it applies to all its forms. Such an objection would provide not only theoretical insight but also guidance on how to integrate technology with politics. What I call the Collective Moral Character Objection meets this demand. The Collective Moral Character Objection is that epistocracy provides peoples inadequate opportunity to develop moral character. By ‘a people’, I mean a group of individuals sharing a social identity. Because individuals have strong interests in the peoples they belong to developing moral characters, it is at least permissible to adopt political regimes like democracy that can provide this value, even if they otherwise produce worse outcomes than epistocracy.

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