Are calls for unity too weak and too generic to move Americans? What are the hard truths that stand in the way of unity?
Educator, activist, and author Tim Shriver joined the Braver Angels podcast to talk about his new book, "The Call to Unite," and the budding nationwide movement to unite America.
The Call to Unite | Tim Shriver with John Wood, Jr. & April Lawsonwww.youtube.com
When the World goes Mad, one must accept Madness as Sanity, since Sanity is, in the last analysis, nothing but the Madness on which the Whole World happens to agree. (George Bernard Shaw)
Among the most prolific and famous playwrights of the 20th century, Shaw wrote “Pygmalion,” the play upon which “My Fair Lady” was based. Pygmalion was a Greek mythological figure, a sculptor from Cyprus, who fell in love with the statue he created. Aphrodite turned his sculpture into a real woman, promoting the idea that the “created” is greater than the “creator.”
There is a positive benefit to high expectations about belief in creation, one that wise parents frequently employ: the “Pygmalion effect.” Basically, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy: Tell your child he can, and the chances greatly increase that he will.
Yet, there is a negative connotation as well, a dangerous assumption, whether we’re talking politics, religion, or new innovations.
That is: what we believe to be true becomes true.
We cannot turn on a television, open a computer, pick up a newspaper, or magazine without encountering a new development in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its ever-increasing grip on the world.
With fear and trepidation, many of us believe we are, or soon will be, at the mercy of AI. We see AI as a modern-day King Kong, unleashed and ruthlessly ravaging our society, embodying all the gorilla-monster’s savage single-mindedness.
We then essentially assume the role of Fay Wray, also known as the “Scream Queen,” who played the “damsel-in-distress” in the 1933 King Kong movie. There is no place to hide from this ferocious giant; we have no recourse. Our only hope is to be somehow rescued.
But how will our hoped-for “rescue” from total domination by the cold, virtual “machine” dubbed AI happen? How will we and our society survive if “Hal” is running the show? Meanwhile, the Titans of the AI industry, Elon Musk and Sam Altman, duke it out in court as to who will “rule the empire.”
Are we really so helpless in the wake of this “invasion?” Have we succumbed to the usual societal symptom of throwing ourselves at the mercy of the latest technological advances?
We use them excessively because we can.
But, if we do not employ discernment, aren’t we just guzzling the latest flavor of the Kool-Aid?
AI’s promotion and promises are meaningless unless they make a real connection to society’s betterment or to our personal benefit. The length of its leash is only as long as we unravel it.
AI’s potential is amazing, astounding, and astronomical. With our “combined knowledge,” we can cut processing, compare statistics, weigh possible outcomes, and summarize mountains of paperwork. Medically AI shows itself to be more phenomenal with each passing week.
New on the horizon is a Character AI called Pygmalion, which allows us to define character parameters without filters. Do we really believe it can empathize, can fulfill us? Or are we allocating our precious humanness to the diamond brilliance of perfection, forgetting the only “perfect diamond” is a fake diamond and not a diamond at all?
Society is—finally—recognizing the dangers of our social media obsession. We are not laboratory rats; we are not lemmings. “Influencers” can only influence us if we let them. We do not have to buy into it, and there is a movement towards authenticity.
Time for a similar reaction to the A-I phenomena, and the grim predictions concerning it.
Who is not tired of “answers” to all the “questions,” without discussion, sick of going to dinner when the diners talk more to Siri or Chat GPT than to each other? Are we all suffering from short-term memory loss and cannot remember the dislocation and isolation of the Co-Vid epidemic, how we longed for “real” connection?
AI, in condensed form, is a sum of our human knowledge, but without the humanity. It has already proven itself a valuable tool in our “toolbox.” Nonetheless, it is a tool.
It is more essential than ever to be able to tell the real from the fake. We must know where the decimal point goes, what is genuine, and what is virtual. Machines have helped us for centuries with menial tasks, and AI can help us with mental ones. But we must be able to discern.
The only path to developing this discernment is education. A popular belief of those growing up in the “electronic age” is that they can delegate their work to AI, that it is no longer necessary to have fundamental knowledge of the humanities, sciences, etc. This theory, if carried forward, will put future generations at the “mercy “of A-I.
We must understand the context. The truest value remains the human connection; the true connection is human values.
Throughout history, our innovations have changed the world: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Industrial Age, the Information Age, and now, on the brink of yet another breakthrough.
Let us decide what course we will pursue with AI, and how we can better our world with it. In this latest innovation of the information age, moral courage is required, and discernment is essential.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own minds. (Emerson)
Amy Lockard is an Iowa resident who regularly contributes to regional newspapers and periodicals. She is working on the second of a four-book fictional series based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice."
In March, First Lady Melania Trump hosted an AI-powered humanoid robot at the White House during the Fostering the Future Together Global Coalition Summit, and introduced Plato, a humanoid educator marketed as a replacement for teachers that could homeschool children. A humanoid educator that speaks multiple languages, is always available, and draws on a vast store of information could expand access in meaningful ways. But the evidence suggests that the risks outweigh the benefits, that adoption will be uneven, and that the families most likely to adopt Plato will bear those risks disproportionately.
Research on excessive technology use in childhood has found consistent results. Young children and teenagers who spend too much time with screens are more likely to experience reduced physical activity, lower attention spans, depression, and social anxiety. On the same day that Melania Trump introduced Plato, a California jury ruled that Meta and YouTube contributed to anxiety and depression in a woman who began using social media at age 6, a reminder that the consequences of under-tested technology on children can be severe and long-lasting.
The concern with technology use goes beyond screen time. A 2024 study by researchers at MIT's Media Lab found that reliance on generative AI chatbots reduces learning retention and critical thinking, the very outcomes Melania Trump claimed Plato would foster. Child development research has shown that for children to develop resilience and independent reasoning, they need to experience difficulty, struggle, and sometimes fail. A robot that is, by design, always patient and always available interrupts this learning process. Far from producing "deep critical thinking," an educator who never challenges a child to sit with confusion is likely to produce the opposite.
Traditional schooling provides something no information-rich robot can replicate. It offers structured opportunities to practice teamwork, communication, and conflict resolution alongside peers and imperfect adults—skills that are crucial to becoming a productive adult.
The broader impact of introducing humanoid educators is even more alarming. A shift to humanoid teachers will reorganize existing educational inequalities in the U.S. The exploding costs of childcare and K-12 education already strain families across the country. For middle- and low-income families searching for solutions, a humanoid educator backed by the First Lady may seem like a viable path forward. In reality, these families and their children would unknowingly become unpaid beta testers for an unproven product, one that the developers themselves may not use on their own kids. Several tech company CEOs, including Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Evan Spiegel, have spoken openly about limiting their children’s screen time. Even Elon Musk, who admitted he set no such limits, has since said he regrets it, noting that algorithms had reshaped how his children think.
The resulting landscape would look like this: a competent human teacher becomes a luxury service accessible only to the ultra-rich; middle-class families turn to humanoid robots for some semblance of pedagogy; and low-income families continue to face the compounding disadvantages of under-resourced schools. The gap widens, and it just wears a new face.
Supporters of humanoid educators may argue that they are tackling a shortage of qualified teachers. But this framing misses the actual problem. The United States does not have a shortage of qualified teachers; it has a shortage of funding for them. Redirecting resources toward humanoid robots does not solve that problem; it deepens it. Every dollar invested in Plato is a dollar not spent on teacher salaries, classroom resources, or the school infrastructure that students in under-resourced communities desperately need. Framing a funding failure as a supply problem and then selling a technology product as the fix masks who benefits and who pays the price.
There is also a safety dimension that cannot be glossed over. There have been documented instances of generative AI chatbots encouraging teenagers to self-harm. Deploying an untested humanoid robot, one that does not understand ethics, context, or the emotional vulnerability of a child, as a primary educator introduces serious and poorly understood risks. Before Plato or any similar product is rolled out at scale, those risks need to be studied rigorously, not discovered after the fact. Children deserve better than to be the experiment.
Congress should mandate multi-stakeholder research into humanoid educators, funded by the AI companies developing these products and conducted in genuine collaboration with K-12 educators, higher education researchers, child development specialists, and the families who would be most affected. The research should assess impacts on learning retention, critical thinking, social development, and child safety, with findings made public before any large-scale deployment.
Dr. Erezi Ogbo-Gebhardt is an assistant professor of information science at North Carolina Central University’s School of Library and Information Sciences, and a Public Voices Fellow on technology in the public interest with The OpEd Project.
The future of AI should be measured by its impact on ordinary Americans—not just tech executives and investors. Exploring AI inequality, labor concerns, and responsible innovation.
We’re failing the Kayla Test and running out of time to pass it. Whether AI goes “well” for the country is not a question anyone in SF or DC can answer. To assess whether AI is truly advancing the interests of Americans, AI stakeholders must engage with more than power users, tokenmaxxers, and Fortune 500 CEOs. A better evaluation is to talk to folks like Kayla, my Lyft driver in Morgantown, WV, and find out what they think about AI. It's a test I stumbled upon while traveling from an AI event at the West Virginia University College of Law to one at Stanford Law.
Kayla asked me what I do for a living. I told her that I’m a law professor focused on AI policy. Those were the last words I said for the remainder of the ride to the airport.
She methodically walked through a long list of reasons why AI was causing her and her loved ones far more trouble than it seemed worth. She talked about data centers and another era of extractive capitalism. She railed against the algorithms that seemed to force her to work longer and harder for a little extra pay. She shared her concerns that her kids lacked teachers with a strong understanding of the latest tech. On the whole, she was anything but positive about AI. Having delivered AI talks in Montana, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Nebraska, Virginia, Alaska, Ohio, Nevada, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Texas, and several other states, I know others would likely respond with a similarly lengthy set of AI grievances.
Her lack of enthusiasm is unsurprising. Rather than causing all tides to rise, it feels to many Americans a lot more like AI is poking holes in lifeboats. That sinking feeling will continue until policymakers and AI companies start asking and answering the questions that are top of mind for Americans trying to stay afloat.
AI policy conversations often revolve around questions disconnected from how everyday Americans experience this technological wave. On X, you'll find debates about how to define AGI, how to assess if it's been achieved, and how to address the national security risks that may follow. On the Hill, you'll find a few conversations and hearings on the economic and societal instability many Americans already associate with AI. Yet, those efforts rarely result in action—let alone action on the scale and scope that aligns with the urgency demanded by Americans watching their savings sink and the horizon blur.
Our country has a tired habit of asking middle and working-class Americans to bear the burden of technological progress that is always a few years away. In the interim, their economic security is threatened, their local resources are exploited, and their ability to live a good life and build an even better one for their children feels harder and harder. You can disagree with the empirical validity of those feelings, but ultimately, it's how many Americans understandably think about yet another tech boom era. They don’t have the time to read up on how AI carries tremendous promise for healthcare, science, education, and entrepreneurialism. Their on-the-ground experience is that AI is very highly correlated with a more precarious status quo.
So here's the test: ask someone in a low- to middle-income community outside of the Bay Area and the Beltway what they think about AI. Note that this must be an actual, in-person conversation—not some poll or text exchange. If they have anything positive to say about how AI is directly improving their lives or the well-being of their loved ones and neighbors, then we're headed in the right direction. If, as is the case today, they feel like they're on the wrong end of another lopsided deal, then all those involved in trying to make sure AI goes "well" have a lot of work to do.
I’m one of those people who feels a personal obligation to ensure AI is something other than a boon to VCs and folks who happened to invest in Nvidia on a hunch a few years back. My start in tech policy was working to close the Digital Divide—a divide that’s still prevalent in communities across the nation. We’re at a severe risk of once again seeing technology become a tool of division, a cause of inequality, and a source of political strife. That’s why I’m dedicated to taking the Kayla Test seriously—talking more with the folks who aren’t reading this post, who don’t read Arxiv in their spare time, and who feel like they’ve serially been asked to support the American Dreams of others.
Passing the Kayla Test isn't complicated. Get out of the hearing rooms. Leave the Signal chats. Drive through towns where the nearest data center is the biggest employer and the nearest AI researcher is a thousand miles away. Listen. Then build policy around their answers, not around the ones that play well in a Senate hearing or a venture pitch. The Kaylas of this country are not asking for much. They want honest work, good schools for their kids, and some say in what gets built around them. If AI can't deliver that, it doesn't matter how impressive the benchmarks get. We will have failed an essential test.
Kevin Frazier is a Senior Fellow at the Abundance Institute, directs the AI Innovation and Law Program at the University of Texas School of Law.
From “Patriot Games” to The Hunger Games, how spectacle, social media, and political culture risk normalizing violence and eroding empathy.
When the Trump administration announced the Patriot Games, many people laughed. Selecting two children per state for a nationally televised sports competition looked too much like Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games to take seriously. But that instinct, to laugh rather than look closer, is one the Capitol is counting on. It has always been easier to normalize violence when it arrives dressed as entertainment or patriotism.
Here’s what I mean: The Hunger Games starts with the reaping, the moment when a Capitol official selects two children, one boy and one girl, to fight to the death against tributes from every other district. The games were created as an annual reminder of a failed rebellion, to remind the districts that dissent has consequences. At first, many Capitol residents saw the games as a just punishment. But sentiments shifted as the spectacle grew—when citizens could bet on winners, when a death march transformed into a beauty pageant, when murder became a pathway to celebrity.
Tiny shifts made over time resulted in a complacent citizenry, subtly trained to see cruelty as patriotism.
And while I don’t believe Trump is preparing the nation to watch children kill each other, I can’t help but notice those same mechanisms of shock, awe, spectacle, and eventual numbness being used on us every single day.
Every day we are barraged by absurdity. We’ve waited for social media posts to tell us if we’re at war. We’ve laughed when our Secretary of Health did push-ups in a sauna while drinking raw milk with a former rock star. We’ve chuckled at the incompetence of a made-up task force, DOGE. We’ve guffawed every time the president fell asleep on camera.
But between the jokes, we saw glimpses of violence. We saw two U.S. citizens murdered on the street, and we marched for them, at least until the cameras disappeared. Because police brutality is our new normal. We saw video evidence of U.S. bombings of Iran played to a popular culture mixtape, and we wondered more about copyright infringement and music artists' responses than the lives lost in an unnecessary war, because the culture of virality has normalized violence, as long as it arrives in the right format, set to the right beat.
Soon, we begin to laugh at it all, the violent and the absurd, out of discomfort, out of incredulity, as a trauma response. We click, share, and repeat until we learn to scroll past brutality without flinching. We hold our anger inside because outrage over absurdity feels…well…absurd. And in this holding, we participate in a slow conditioning where we can no longer tell where entertainment ends and violence begins.
Ours is a society that has practiced looking away from the suffering of children for a long time. So, the psychological and emotional destruction of children has already become background noise. We crossed that line of complacency a while ago.
We crossed it when school shootings were met with thoughts and prayers instead of policy. We crossed it when the pleas of Latinx children kidnapped by ICE went unheard, save for the few viral moments the news cycle deemed worthy. We crossed it in the fleeting outcry against legislation lifting the ban on conversion therapy for minors, protecting the speech of those causing harm while erasing the needs of the children in the room.
Many of our children are already participants in the Hunger Games. Their suffering is already treated as content instead of a crisis. The one thing we’re missing is a way to bet, to gamify their pain.
As a literacy researcher who studies dystopian fiction, I’ve spent my career asking: what if this story is warning us about something real? I take that question seriously because these stories exist to help us see the world as it is and as it could become.
What if a country that imprisons adults for existing on its soil turns its attention to the mass jailing of children? What if a country that classifies certain people as nonexistent due to their gender identity or relationship preferences decides children must conform or be erased? What if a country that’s made it possible to bet on everything from basketball games to military strikes turns to gambling on the lives of young people?
To be sure, the Patriot Games and the Hunger Games are distinct, and we have not slid completely into dystopia. But the mechanisms—spectacle, desensitization, the disposal of children dressed as patriotism—are the same, and mechanisms do not wait for permission to accelerate.
In The Hunger Games, Katniss accepted her role as a symbol of rebellion even when naming it cost her. Cinna fought the Capitol from within, using art as defiance for the people he loved. Gale chose to fight in whatever ways he could, and he never normalized what others had learned to accept.
We can do all three. We can name what we see without waiting until we’re certain. We can use our art, curricula, policies, and stories as acts of resistance. And we can refuse to scroll past without flinching.
Because that’s how we resist the pull toward dystopia. We learn from the mistakes of other worlds in hopes that our own will survive.
Stephanie Toliver is a Public Voices Fellow and a member of the OpEd Alumni Project sponsored by the University of Illinois.
Some MAGA loyalists have turned on Trump. Why the rest haven’t