We no longer live in the internet age. We live in the algorithmic society.

That phrase stayed with me after I listened to Yale Law School professor Jack M. Balkin speak at the Technology and Constitutional Rot conference, held this week at Stanford Law School in California, just before the start of the new academic year.

I was particularly interested in the talk because of my work as a journalist and the project I am developing during my year as a JSK Journalism Fellow at Stanford. I left with many questions about artificial intelligence, journalism, public opinion and democracy that will be extremely useful as I develop a conceptual framework for a project aimed at finding solutions to challenges facing journalism.

Balkin, a professor of constitutional law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School, argues that we moved beyond the so-called internet society some time ago. We now live in what he calls the algorithmic society: one in which governments, markets and culture increasingly depend on data collection and analysis, algorithms, platforms and artificial intelligence.

One of the ideas that struck me most was that technology is not neutral, but neither does it determine our future on its own. What matters are the choices we make about how we design and use it, the institutions we build around it and the business models we choose. Balkin’s argument is not apocalyptic. He maintains that we can find democratic and fair uses for new technologies. There is room for human agency and institutional transformation. He drew on different periods in U.S. history — including times as critical as slavery and World War II — to explain that periods of constitutional deterioration can also be followed by periods of renewal.

For years, we talked about how the internet transformed the media. Now we risk reducing the discussion about AI to another set of technological questions: Which tool should we use? Which task should we automate? How much time can we save? How can we produce more?

Perhaps the most important questions are different.

What kind of journalism do we want to build with this technology? What values do we want to protect? Which decisions are we willing to delegate, and which must remain in human hands? How do we use AI without eroding the trust journalism needs to fulfill its role in society?

Because there is another aspect of the conference that I consider fundamental.

Balkin argues that a democracy needs much more than elections. It needs a public sphere where knowledge is produced, opinions are formed and citizens can evaluate those who hold power. He warns that the same technologies that have vastly expanded our ability to express ourselves have also weakened institutions devoted to producing knowledge, including journalism and academia.

In the algorithmic society, everything also becomes content.

An investigative news report is content. A scientific study is content. But so are rumors, falsehoods and propaganda. Platforms reward attention and engagement, not necessarily truth, deliberation or public value. The result, Balkin argues, can be a blurring of the distinctions between knowledge and propaganda and a weakening of institutions such as journalism, universities and science.

I thought a great deal about Puerto Rico as I listened to him.

Especially when he spoke about polarization and the loss of trust as elements of democratic deterioration. Polarization takes on another dimension when we stop seeing someone who thinks differently as a fellow citizen with whom we disagree and begin seeing that person as an enemy to be defeated.

A democratic society needs conflict, differences and debate. It does not require us to think alike. But it does require us to preserve some common ground that allows us to reach agreements when possible and, when that is not possible, to trust that democratic institutions and rules will continue to function even when those who think differently from us are in power.

Without that minimum level of shared trust, disagreement ceases to be part of democracy and begins to threaten its ability to function.

That is why I believe this conversation also matters for journalism.

If platforms and algorithms favor provocation, conflict and attention, those of us who work with information must ask ourselves whether we are reinforcing those dynamics or helping to build a public sphere where it is still possible to distinguish between information and propaganda, knowledge and opinion, facts and falsehoods.

When we turn a public figure’s social media post promoting hatred, ridicule or confrontation into a news story simply because it fits the logic of clicks or ratings, are we serving journalism well? Are we reporting it because it has news value, or are we amplifying it because we know it will attract attention?

And here is perhaps what I appreciated most about the conference: It was not an apocalyptic warning about technology.

Balkin emphasized that technology creates possibilities, but we humans decide what to do with them. Institutions can adapt. Rules can change. Models can be redesigned. And societies have gone through periods of deterioration before, followed by periods of renewal.

That leaves room for action. In terms of my field of study, I take away an idea that seems simple but places an enormous responsibility on us: Technology can transform journalism, but the responsibility for deciding where we want to take it remains ours.

This translation was generated with the assistance of AI and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and clarity.