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AI Meets the Cascade of Rigidity — Digitalist Papers

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A quarter of the way into the 21st century, we face multiple overlapping crises, what Adam Tooze calls the polycrisis. (2) One factor quietly underpins or amplifies each of these individual crises: the diminished state capacity of the world’s advanced democracies. State capacity is simply the ability of a government to achieve its policy goals, and its decline is visible in everything from the botched COVID-19 response to our inability to build green infrastructure in the face of an impending climate collapse. In these cases and many others, the famously dysfunctional U.S. Congress (and its state and local counterparts) did in fact act, passing much-needed if imperfect legislation. But the intent of that legislation was only partially realized. Elected leaders who pay attention to outcomes feel like they are trying to steer the ship of our nation, but the rudder is loose from the helm. Even when we pass laws, we fail to implement them. This crisis of state capacity isn’t as simple as a

AI Meets the Cascade of Rigidity Sep 22 Written By Shawneric Hachey by Jennifer Pahlka (1) Diminished state capacity leads to civic disengagement as governments remain risk-averse and fail to meet public service expectations. The author advocates for understanding bureaucratic constraints and using AI to build government capacity for more effective governance. A quarter of the way into the 21st century, we face multiple overlapping crises, what Adam Tooze calls the polycrisis. (2) One factor quietly underpins or amplifies each of these individual crises: the diminished state capacity of the wo

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