Knowingo
The cover of The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State

The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State

Jill Lepore, 2026

Jill Lepore shows how engineers and tech billionaires, from 1930s Technocracy to today's AI, dreamed of replacing democratic government with machines, and why that dream is failing.

Get the app Read on the web

4 parts, about 26 minutes to read.

Why read it

  • Traces how rule by machines owned by a few corporations grew from old dreams of government by numbers and technocracy
  • Helps you read tech leaders' promises about AI and space colonies as political choices rather than inevitable progress
  • A historian's view that draws on science fiction, early computing and the history of knowledge to argue this future can be dismantled

Who it is for

  • Citizens uneasy about tech companies' growing political power
  • Readers of science fiction who wonder how it shaped Silicon Valley
  • Students of democracy and the history of technology

What the summary covers

  1. Preface2 min
  2. Part One: Government by Machine13 min
  3. Part Two: What Robots Want9 min
  4. Epilogue: The Last Days of the Artificial State2 min

Recommended by

  • Jaron LanierAuthor of You Are Not a Gadget
    Lepore is our best scholar of the culture of governance, and our most vital historian.

About the author

  • Jill LeporeHarvard professor of American history and staff writer at The New Yorker
    • Born on 27 August 1966 in West Boylston, Massachusetts
    • Received an M.A. in American culture from the University of Michigan in 1990
    • Started at Harvard in 2003
    • Has contributed to The New Yorker since 2005
    • First book The Name of War (1998) won the Bancroft Prize
    • Professor of Law at Harvard Law School as well as of American history

Read it alongside

  • Puts it into practiceThe AI Con

    Jill Lepore argues that voters, legislation and the courts can make technology answerable to the public; Emily Bender and Alex Hanna say existing law applies, that deployers must justify their systems, and that some uses should be banned.

  • Goes deeperAI Valley

    Jill Lepore argues that OpenAI let its democratic and safety promises fade as the race sped up, while Gary Rivlin recounts how costs pushed it toward a capped profit arm with Microsoft's money and how its board's firing of Altman was reversed within days.

More books like this