Will AI defeat populism?

In December 2013, a PR employee named Justine Sacco became bored while waiting for her flight to Cape Town to depart. So she navigated to the Twitter app (now X) on her smartphone and posted the following message: “I’m going to Africa. I hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”

Since Wi-Fi connection wasn’t available on most flights back then, Sacco turned off the internet for several hours as her plane crossed oceans and continents – before landing to find her life and career destroyed. By the time Sacco reached Cape Town, millions of Twitter users, including Donald Trump, had branded her a racist and had her fired from her job.

For many internet historians, this episode marked the beginning of the era of wake and cancel culture, which lasted until around 2022 (or never passed, depending on who you ask). But in retrospect, it is clear that the Sacco incident embodies something else: the era of social media, a…