Episode
AI May Be the Tool That Brings Government Back to Life?
- Podcast
- Talk Cocktail
- Published
- Jun 25, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2114
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Summary
What if the real threat to democracy isn’t artificial intelligence, but a government that never learns to use it? In this WhoWhatWhy podcast , Beth Simone Noveck makes the unexpectedly optimistic case that AI is not just one more thing for government to regulate. It may be the tool that finally reinvents how government works, and more to the point, how it feels to deal with it. For 50 years we have been told government is the problem: slow, bloated, hopeless, a relic that could never keep pace with the modern world. Then came DOGE, swinging a chainsaw in the name of efficiency and cutting out much that worked along with much that didn’t, as if the whole apparatus were beyond saving. But what if we have been asking the wrong question all along? Noveck’s question is why institutions built for an age when information was scarce still cannot listen, learn, and respond in a world drowning in it. Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe