Contributor(s): Chris Gilson, Professor Lawrence Lessig | In October 2024 the Phelan US Centre spoke to spoke to Lawrence Lessig, the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School. Cited by The New Yorker as “the most important thinker on intellectual property in the internet era”, Professor Lessig now focuses on “institutional corruption”, especially as that affects democracy. He is the author of many books, including They Don’t Represent Us: Reclaiming Our Democracy, Fidelity & Constraint: How the Supreme Court Has Read the American Constitution, and most recently, How to Steal a Presidential Election.

 

They spoke about how AI and the media can affect the legitimacy and conduct of elections, how policymakers have attempted to govern and control the use of AI and about how citizens’ assemblies could be a way to protect democracy against AI’s influence.

 

This episode was produced by Chris Gilson and Anderson Tan.

 

Further reading and resources

Podcast and video of the 8 October 2024 event, ‘What AI is doing to America's democracy’ – LSE Public Lecture with Professor Lawrence Lessig and LSE President and Vice Chancellor Professor Larry Kramer - https://www.lse.ac.uk/united-states/events/2024-events/What-AI-is-doing-to-Americas-democracy

How to Steal a Presidential Election (Yale University Press, 2024) - https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300270792/how-to-steal-a-presidential-election/