Anne-Marie Slaughter
Says More…
This week in Say More, PS talks with Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former director of policy planning in the US State Department, CEO of the think tank New America, and Professor Emerita of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University.
Project Syndicate: In January, you highlighted a fundamental flaw in prevailing approaches to conflict resolution: in some cases, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the two sides “inhabit distinct, unbridgeable sensory worlds,” making the quest for anything more than a “cold peace” practically futile. How applicable is this insight to cases of extreme domestic political polarization, such as in the United States, where supporters and detractors of Donald Trump seem not just to perceive reality differently, but to perceive different realities?
Anne-Marie Slaughter: It is a very similar dynamic. Like Palestinians and Israelis, Democrats and Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) Republicans consume different media – from news to entertainment – and perceive both their experiences and the information they receive through different lenses. They also tend to live in highly homogeneous communities of like-minded people, who share their habits and reinforce their worldviews.
My analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian divide was informed by the book An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, by the Pulitzer-Prize-winning science writer Ed Yong. His point, which I think absolutely applies to US domestic divisions, is that our lived experience is determined significantly by the sensors with which we perceive the world around us. For example, because humans can see many colors but have rather weak senses of smell, the world we perceive is entirely different from that of, say, dogs, which can see in only two colors but have a capacity for smell that is unimaginable to us. So, even if we could talk to dogs, finding common ground, in terms of lived experience or perceptions of reality, would presumably be extremely difficult, if not impossible.
Most human beings – Palestinians and Israelis, Democrats and Republicans – have basically the same physical sensors. But if the information fed to those sensors is different enough for long enough, it can presumably lead to the same result – not a refusal to see what the other sees, but a literal inability to do so. This would call for a different strategy for bridging divides or finding unity.
PS: In both 2014 and 2023, you emphasized the role that Europe – which “transcended two millennia of wars triggered by deep ethnic, religious, political, and cultural divisions” – must play in shaping the outcome of the Ukraine war and in aiding Ukraine’s post-conflict reconstruction. What should European leaders be doing to advance peace and support Ukraine today, and to lay the groundwork for the country’s long-term recovery?
AMS: It is striking that at places like the Munich Security Conference and the Aspen Security Forum, US leaders and national-security officials now readily acknowledge that Europe has done more for Ukraine than the US has. The US is still the biggest supplier of military assistance, but 21 European countries have now signed bilateral security agreements with Ukraine, and more are lining up to do so, and in terms of overall assistance – covering military, economic, and humanitarian aid – Europe has taken the lead.
This is appropriate, but Europe can do even more. For starters, the European Union should appoint one official to act as a counterpart to America’s special representative for Ukraine’s recovery, a position now held by former Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker. This official could coordinate the work of different national and supranational agencies, organizations, and officials, including, potentially, a network of national representatives focused on Ukraine’s recovery.
Moreover, the EU should begin preparations for a prolonged, but not permanent, division of Ukraine, akin to the long division of Germany during the Cold War. The “free” part of Ukraine should be increasingly integrated into the EU, even as “East Ukraine” remains under Russian occupation.
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PS: You have touted the potential of digital technologies – possibly supported by artificial intelligence – to facilitate the delivery of crucial services, everywhere from the US to Ukraine. The “ultimate test,” you wrote in 2022, comes when governments “face sustained challenges in feeding, employing, and protecting their people.” How can we ensure that digital technologies pass that test while upholding democratic values?
AMS: The idea of “democratic AI” is both fascinating and timely.
Not all AI is created equal. There are, for example, large language models like ChatGPT, “narrow” models created to perform specific tasks in fields ranging from medicine to transportation to education, and “artificial general intelligence,” which, while still in development, aims to rival – and exceed – human intelligence. As the public comes to understand more about the different types of AI, the importance of programming safety mechanisms into the technology is becoming increasingly apparent.
One possibility would be to require AI to include a built-in “constitution,” as the company Anthropic is demonstrating. The idea is to embed certain predetermined values into AI models, rather than allow their “thinking” to be dictated fully by the content on which they are trained or the user feedback they receive.
Could AI constitutions encompass democratic values, such as checks and balances, privacy and transparency, the imperative of maximizing the common good, the right of the people affected by a particular decision to have a say in it, and the regular rotation of power? Could such “democratic AI,” wherever it is developed, provide a counterweight to “autocratic AI,” which is designed to serve the interests of specific governments?
Yes, part of the test of a democratic AI will be whether it advances people’s actual needs, such as food, security, and purpose. But, as for any democratic system or institution, part of the test will be which constraints on power are built into it.
BY THE WAY . . .
PS: In a recent discussion on gender and work in the AI era, you celebrated the progress that has been made in closing the gender wage gap, while lamenting that the gap not only remains large, but progress has stalled. What lessons can be drawn from past progress, and how might the rise of AI affect the effort to achieve gender parity in the workplace?
AMS: The single most important thing we can do today and in the coming decades is to ensure that women, and caregivers more broadly, are fully represented in all of our power structures. I am talking about heads of state, legislators, and mayors, as well as CEOs, non-profit bosses, and civic leaders of all kinds.
At the same time, governments must build up the “infrastructure of care,” which is as essential to flourishing economies as roads, bridges, and ports. And managers in all types of workplaces must recognize that all workers are likely to be caregivers at some point, and that caregiving should not hamper their career development, even if they have to drop back or stay in place for certain periods of time.
AI could help, both by increasing productivity to the point that we can move to a four-day workweek or a six-hour workday (or both!), and by ensuring that the vast majority of jobs can be done at least partly from home.
PS: If Trump wins the upcoming US presidential election, which approaches are likely to be most effective in defending democratic institutions and values, and what preparations should defenders be making now?
AMS: The US is suffering from severe trust deficits, both between the people and their governments (local, state, and federal) and between blocs of voters. Moreover, far too many Americans do not feel represented by either major party, but cannot see any alternative, because smaller parties do not stand a chance of winning power within the current system.
Given this, the most important thing we can do to strengthen our democracy, regardless of who wins in November, is to reform our electoral systems, so that more than two parties or candidates are competing for leadership positions within a system of proportional representation. This would allow different groups in society to choose leaders they feel genuinely represent them, and bolster the public’s ability to hold elected leaders accountable – two fundamental democratic values.
Equally important is finding ways for “red” and “blue” Americans to find things they can agree on, no matter how small. Only then can we again start seeing one another as fellow human beings and fellow Americans. These efforts must start at the local level.
PS: As you noted recently, the organization you lead, New America, works with “big ideas.” What does such work entail, and which current big ideas are you particularly interested in working with?
AMS: New America combines big ideas for how to transform America’s political, educational, economic, and social systems with concrete efforts to effect change on the ground. The big ideas flow from the recognition that the US is changing dramatically, in terms of its demography, technology, and position in the world, and faces threats that can be mitigated through neither isolationism nor interventionism.
What does this demand? We must build electoral systems that support a genuinely representative multi-ethnic, multi-racial democracy. We must overhaul our educational systems, from birth through retirement, to make them high-quality, accessible, and affordable. We must put families, not just individual workers, at the center of our economic and social policies. We must ensure that technology supports, rather than undermines, democratic values. And we must design and implement a foreign policy that advances not only national power and security, but also the survival and prosperity of all human beings on a healthy planet.
PS Events: Climate Week NYC 2024
Watch our Climate Week NYC 2024 event now to hear speakers from across the globe – including Mia Amor Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados; Gabriel Boric, President of Chile; Jiwoh Abdulai, Minister of Environment and Climate Change of Sierra Leone; and Maisa Rojas Corradi, Minister of the Environment of Chile – discuss climate leadership, development finance, and more.
