Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She has written extensively on the intersection of technology and politics, and her lecture addresses how the former has come to dominate the latter in what she calls the “Artificial State.” Supported by visual materials, she will trace the rise of the automation of politics, examine its consequences, and foretell its fall. In an interview with campus.leben, she gave a few hints about what she plans to discuss in her lecture.

The lecture is open to the public and will take place at 6:30 p.m. on February 12 in Lecture Hall 1a, Rost- und Silberlaube, Habelschwerdter Allee 45.

Professor Lepore, can you describe, briefly, what you are going to talk about in the lecture?

The lecture argues that the liberal nation-state is being fast replaced with what I call the “Artificial State,” a digital communications infrastructure with which governments and private corporations organize and automate politics and public discourse. I’m trying to give a name to what is happening.

How do you understand the word “artificial?”

The word “artificial” has a very long history in association with the state, back to Hobbes’s notion of the state as an “artificial man.” He was using that term metaphorically. I am not. I also trace the complicated history by which what is now called “artificial intelligence” came by that term.

Where does the increasing digitization of politics and public discourse begin to cross the line into actual machine-based political decision-making?

 One measure is inversion. An online platform, like a social media service, is “inverted” when there are more bots than humans on the site. There is no longer any social media platform that is not inverted.

How has the first year of President Trump’s second term influenced your analysis?

I have been writing about the relationship between technology and politics for decades. My lecture, and the associated book, isn’t commentary on current affairs. It’s a history.

Do you see examples of political, constitutional, or cultural mechanisms outside the United States that have either limited or accelerated the automation of politics?

The building of the Artificial State has generally happened first in the United States and has spread around the world, beginning with the most wired-up nations. The responses, however, have varied tremendously. There is far more suspicion of automated politics in Europe, for instance, than there is in the US.

What do you mean by the “fall” of the Artificial State?

The rise of the Artificial State has been predicted in science for centuries. So has its fall. Narratively, its fall is inevitable. I think that fall is inevitable politically, too.

What connection do you draw to the lecture series’ eponym Hegel?

Hegel believed the state could protect freedom. I’m not directly engaging with Hegel. But I’m surely asking questions about what has become of the state that he would have asked, too.

Sam Gurwitt conducted the interview.