Scientific American: Will democracy survive big data and artificial intelligence?
Professor Dirk Helbing co-authored an article in Scientific American discussing the future of democracy, and how the digital revolution will change our world.
"He who has large amounts of data can manipulate people in subtle ways. But even benevolent decision-makers may do more wrong than right, says Dirk Helbing. Proponents of Nudging argue that people do not take optimal decisions and it is, therefore, necessary to help them. This school of thinking is known as paternalism. However, Nudging does not choose the way of informing and persuading people. It rather exploits psychological weaknesses in order to bring us to certain behaviours, i.e. we are tricked. The scientific approach underlying this approach is called "behaviorism", which is actually long out of date." wrote Scientific American.
external pageThe article was published on Scientific American's website on February 25, 2017. A external pageGerman version of the article first appeared in Spektrum der Wissenschaft, Scientific American’s sister publication, as “Digitale Demokratie statt Datendiktatur”.