Francis Fukuyama, speaking at the “The Power to Make Things Happen” conference organized by Negócios in Lisbon, stated that the internet “removed the intermediaries, journalists, scientists, institutions” that were the “guardians of a certain basic quality of information.”
“There used to be journalistic standards, professional journalists who had certain internal rules about what they could or could not say, how to verify sources, how to report on what they learned through their journalistic work, and the internet has ended all that,” he reiterated.
The economist believes that the internet and social media have brought freedom of expression, but argues that the “quality of discourse has deteriorated substantially” and suddenly “anyone can say whatever they want” to millions of people.
The Stanford University researcher emphasized that discourse is now more “toxic” due to the very construction of social media which promotes this type of expression.
“There is a particular character in social networks that makes the discourse individuals convey, sometimes to millions of people, more toxic than the type of discourse we had before the existence of the internet,” he stated.
In statements to Lusa, Fukuyama said that companies will adopt artificial intelligence (AI) to bring efficiency by “replacing humans with machines,” which generates “a series of political problems because people do not want to be replaced by machines.”
The philosopher consequently argued that people will need to “learn new skills,” leading to a socially and politically “turbulent” scenario.
