If Artificial Intelligence were an angel, there’d be no need for its governance. That’s a 21st-century updating of James Madison’s famous dictum from the 18th century: In Federalist 51 he wrote, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Nothing man-made is angelic. A.I. is no exception.
We don’t all need to be experts on A.I. to survive and flourish, but we need some experts, duly elected or otherwise rightly chosen, looking out for our interests. None of the experts will be angels, either, and so we’ll also have to keep an eye on them. It’s heartening to know that Americans were born with a great tool for guiding A.I.’s impact: The U.S. Constitution, which we celebrate on September 17, Constitution Day. Over the last 234 years, the Constitution has proven itself equal to the challenge of managing non-angels, both human and man-made.
It’s basic conservative wisdom that people, flawed as we are, need a framework to stay on the path of virtue and safety. Absent such a structure, even the good can break bad. Madison (or possibly Alexander Hamilton) knew this, and so he counseled in Federalist 55, “Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates; every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.” The point is that democracy runs amok if the system lacks republican structures. That is, separated powers, as called for in the Constitution, serving as checks and balances on each other.
Lacking such mediating mechanisms, democracy becomes ochlocracy—mob rule—and so people will be, in Madison’s vivid words, “destroying and devouring one another.” Ever the conservative realist, Madison added, “There is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust.” And yet, he continued, hope abides, as “there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence.” That’s what the Constitution is about: Doing its best to eliminate the negative, accentuate the positive.
In the summarizing words of Ashland University’s Christopher Burkett, writing for Constituting America,
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