Earlier this week, a member of the UK Parliament—Mark Sewards—released an AI tool (named “AI Mark”) to assist with constituent inquiries. The public response was rapid and rage-filled. Some people demanded that the member of Parliament (MP) forfeit part of his salary—he's doing less work, right? Others called for his resignation—they didn't vote for AI; they voted for him! Many more simply questioned his thinking—why on earth did he think outsourcing such sensitive tasks to AI would be greeted with applause?
He's not the only elected official under fire for AI use. The Prime Minister of Sweden, Ulf Kristersson, recently admitted to using AI to study various proposals before casting votes. Swedes, like the Brits, have bombarded Kristersson with howls of outrage.
I'll bite and attempt to defend “AI Mark” specifically and the use of AI by elected officials more generally.
Let's start with “AI Mark.” While I understand public frustration around the seemingly hasty adoption of AI into a key government service, my research suggests that those ready to remove Sewards from office are failing to ask a key question: what's the alternative?
"AI Mark" was designed specifically to make up for Sewards' inability to meaningfully respond to manifold constituent inquiries. According to Sewards, he has "tried [his] best to sit at [his] desk and answer all the requests that come through on [his] laptop, but it’s not possible for one person to do that." "AI Mark,” on the other hand, can analyze such requests around the clock. That said, constituents want more than merely to be heard (or read); they're reaching out for some affirmative action by the MP. So, can "AI Mark" help with that?
My hunch is yes. Constituent work is hard. It's arguably the most important role for elected officials. Yet, it's also one of the least appreciated and one of the hardest to do well. Done right, constituent services performs at least three functions: first, it ensures individuals can get through complex bureaucracies; second, it surfaces emerging issues that warrant broader attention; and, third, it directs the elected official to prioritize issues that are most relevant to their communities.
Speaking from my experience as a former intern to a U.S. Senator, I can testify to the fact that "AI Mark" is likely an improvement upon the alternative of either a small army of undergraduate interns pouring over those constituent requests or the elected official themself attempting to do so.
Finding substantive constituent inquiries is no easy task. For every one person reaching out for support on a substantive matter, there are likely dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of duplicative or irrelevant submissions. Hundreds of people may send identical letters urging a vote on a certain issue—a human is not necessary to read each of those; AI can quickly consolidate such letters. Other submissions may involve demands that exceed the authority of the office. There's little need for a human to confirm that the MP, senator, or representative does not have jurisdiction over that request. AI can do that with a high degree of accuracy in a fraction of the time. AI can then quickly filter through the flood of requests that likely do not merit much attention. The elected official and their staff can use that saved time to more promptly take action on the remainder. That's a win for everyone.
With respect to PM Kristersson and the use of AI for research, a similar defense can be raised. Elected officials are often short on time to do research on every issue that comes before their desk. In some cases, they will get a briefing from their staff explaining the pros and cons of that decision. Such analysis may not be high-quality. There’s the possibility that the staffer thinks they know how the official wants to vote or should vote and, therefore, biases their report. There’s also high odds of that staffer being taxed for their time themselves and, consequently, producing an incomplete or inaccurate report. Finally, there’s the possibility of the staffer using AI to do the task! Sophisticated AI tools such as OpenAI’s DeepResearch can scour the internet for relevant sources and information in a matter of minutes; it would be strange if a policy researcher failed to make use of this tool to supplement their analysis. What’s the harm of the PM simply skipping to this final step?
The harm in this case, as well as the case of "AI Mark," is a lack of transparency and engagement. Clandestine use of AI is almost always going to incite public unrest. Folks like to know how and why their elected officials are working on their behalf. The answer, however, is not to prevent or oppose the use of AI in policymaking but rather to make sure such use is out in the open and subject to regular review.
A deep look at how "All in the Family" remains a striking mirror of American politics, class tensions, and cultural manipulation—proving its relevance decades later.
All in This American Family
There are a few shows that have aged as eerily well as All in the Family.
It’s not just that it’s still funny and has the feel not of a sit-com, but of unpretentious, working-class theatre. It’s that, decades later, it remains one of the clearest windows into the American psyche. Archie Bunker’s living room has been, as it were, a small stage on which the country has been working through the same contradictions, anxieties, and unresolved traumas that still shape our politics today. The manipulation of the working class, the pitting of neighbor against neighbor, the scapegoating of the vulnerable, the quiet cruelties baked into everyday life—all of it is still here with us. We like to reassure ourselves that we’ve progressed since the early 1970s, but watching the show now forces an unsettling recognition: The structural forces that shaped Archie’s world have barely budged. The same tactics of distraction and division deployed by elites back then are still deployed now, except more efficiently, more sleekly.
Archie himself is the perfect vessel for this continuity. He is bigoted, blustery, reactive, but he is also wounded, anxious, and constantly misled by forces above and beyond him. Norman Lear created Archie not as a monster to be hated (Lear’s genius was to make Archie lovable despite his loathsome stands), but as a man trapped by the political economy of his era: A union worker who feels his country slipping away, yet cannot see the hands that are actually moving it. His anger leaks sideways, onto immigrants, women, “hippies,” and anyone with less power than he has. The real villains—the wealthy, the connected, the manufacturers of grievance—remain safely and comfortably offscreen. That’s part of the show’s key insight: It reveals how elites thrive by making sure working people turn their frustrations against each other rather than upward.
Edith, often dismissed as naive or scatterbrained, functions as the show’s quiet moral center. Her compassion exposes the emotional void in Archie’s worldview and, in doing so, highlights the costs of the divisions that powerful interests cultivate. Meanwhile, Mike the “Meathead” represents a generation trying to break free from those divisions but often trapped in its own loud self-righteousness. Their clashes are not just family arguments but collisions between competing visions of America’s future. And those visions, tellingly, have yet to resolve themselves.
The political context of the show only sharpens its relevance. Premiering in 1971, All in the Family emerged during the Nixon years, when the “Silent Majority” strategy was weaponizing racial resentment, cultural panic, and working-class anxiety to cement power. Archie was a fictional embodiment of the very demographic Nixon sought to mobilize and manipulate. The show exposed, often bluntly, how economic insecurity was being rerouted into cultural hostility. Watching the show today, it’s impossible to miss how closely that logic mirrors the present, from right-wing media ecosystems to politicians who openly rely on stoking grievances rather than addressing root causes.
What makes the show unsettling today is that its satire feels less like a relic and more like a mirror. The demagogic impulses it spotlighted have simply found new platforms. The working-class anger it dramatized has been harvested by political operatives who, like their 1970s predecessors, depend on division to maintain power. The very cultural debates that fueled Archie’s tirades — about immigration, gender roles, race, and national identity—are still being used as tools to distract from wealth concentration and political manipulation.
If anything, the divisions are sharper now because the mechanisms of manipulation are more sophisticated, for much has been learned by The Machine. The same emotional raw material Lear mined for comedy is now algorithmically optimized for outrage. The same social fractures that played out around Archie’s kitchen table now play out on a scale he couldn’t have imagined. But the underlying dynamics haven’t changed at all.
That is why All in the Family feels so contemporary. The country Lear dissected never healed or meaningfully evolved: It simply changed wardrobe. The tensions, prejudices, and insecurities remain, not because individuals failed to grow but because the economic and political forces that thrive on division have only become more entrenched. Until we confront the political economy that kept Archie and Michael locked in an endless loop of circular bickering, the show will remain painfully relevant for another fifty years.
Ahmed Bouzid is the co-founder of The True Representation Movement.