A Tale of Two Tech Futures: Will AI Fuel Outrage or Foster Reason?

In the last article we learned that about one-third of U.S. adults now read, calculate, and problem-solve at a middle-school level, while fewer than half reach the level where solid critical thinking begins. That widening brain gap explains much of today’s headline politics: when voters struggle to weigh evidence, punch-lines beat policy and the pool of serious candidates grows shallow.

Now a new force steps onto the stage—generative AI. Will it become a tool that lifts millions into higher-reasoning territory, or a rumor mill that pours gasoline on every grievance? To frame that question, we’ll borrow the double portrait Charles Dickens painted in A Tale of Two Cities.

Setting the Stage

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”
—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Published in 1859 but set between 1775 and 1793, the novel contrasts Paris, which unravels into mob violence and the Reign of Terror, with London, which (for all its flaws) clings to rule-of-law courts and a more stable social order.

What kept Dickens’s London from tipping into chaos wasn’t England's superior intellect by any means, but a more transparent information pipeline, allowing the public more time to digest and discuss. Newspapers printed bylines, court proceedings were published, and accounts of parliamentary debates seeped into coffee-house discussions, giving ordinary readers at least a rough set of facts to check before picking a side. 

Paris had no such filters: The ruling Régime required approvals (imprimatur stamps) from royal censors which filtered what was published; many works appeared clandestinely under false imprints, flooding the streets with anonymous pamphlets. Slogans outran evidence, rumor outran reflection, and fury leapt from café tables to the scaffold.

The historical records back up Dickens's narrative. London’s freer press and printed court records let grievances vent through petitions and piecemeal reform, while Paris—awash in un-attributed broadsheets after 1788—moved almost overnight from buzz to bloodshed. The analogy simplifies a messy reality, but the divergence is real.

Two Futures, One Technology

Two and a half centuries later, America stands at a similar fork—choosing between a transparent informational pipeline or opinions in social media (analogous to Paris' pamphlets and broadsheets). With reasoning skills already slipping, AI could steer us toward either future:

  • Best of times: AI becomes a reliable and widely used technology, which people use to cite sources and flag weak logic, widening the pool of informed voters and competent leaders.

  • Worst of times: AI turns public discourse into a hyper-engineered rumor factory—flooding low-skill voters with deep-fake “proofs” and tailor-made outrage.

Let's begin our analysis with the worst of times, the Paris analog.

The "Paris" Scenario

Imagine opening your phone during the 2028 election cycle.

  • A shaky video claims to show officials hauling away ballot boxes at midnight.

  • No badge or watermark tells you where it came from, yet it auto-plays in every feed.

  • A free “voter-help” chat-bot—funded by a shadowy political group—reads your ZIP code and pushes an urgent message:
    “They’re stealing your vote right now. Share this clip before the censors take it down!”

  • Millions do. By the time journalists locate the original security-cam footage (it was actually a janitor moving empty bins) the rumor has hardened into outrage.

Anatomy of a Paris-style outcome


Result: AI accelerates rumor velocity and shortens the gap between grievance and street action—digital Paris, circa 1793.

The "London" Scenario

Now rewind the scene with different defaults.

  • The same video appears, but a red triangle warns “Source unverified.”

  • You tap it and see a side-panel: “Uploaded from an unknown account 2 h ago. No matching footage in trusted archives.”

  • Curious, you open a free library app. In two clicks it shows the original county livestream (empty bins, janitor, time-stamp) and offers a plain-English explainer at your chosen reading level.

  • If you still want a second opinion, a built-in “debate mode” pits two AI models—one pro, one con—against each other, forcing each to cite primary sources.

  • You close the app, shrug, and get on with your day.

Anatomy of a London-style outcome


Result: AI widens the sightlines that let citizens pause, check, and think—digital London, muddling through but mostly avoiding the mob.

Which City Are We Building?


If these gauges tilt the wrong way, we’re paving a road to a Paris: 1793-style fury—only faster. Tilt them the other way, and AI becomes the modern pamphlet press that raises public reasoning instead of torching it.

Ten Everyday Flashpoints Where “Paris vs. London” AI Dynamics Could Play Out

The Longer View—AI as a Second Industrial Revolution

I’m fundamentally an optimist, so before we picture which of these two futures we might inhabit, let’s step back and consider the long game. Think of London in 1775: the spinning jenny and Watt’s steam engine were just prototypes, yet within a generation they reshaped work, wealth, and daily life. The same could happen with AI if we aim it at our weakest point—basic reasoning skills. Early pilots like Khanmigo already act as one-on-one tutors, breaking dense texts into plain English, quizzing students on evidence, and nudging them to ask “Why?” instead of guessing. Scale that up across classrooms, libraries, and workforce programs, and millions of Level-1 learners could jump a tier, shrinking the brain gap faster than any traditional reform has managed. In that future, AI doesn’t replace human judgment; it strengthens it—just as railroads didn’t replace travel but made it broader, faster, and safer.

Choosing Our City

Dickens ended A Tale of Two Cities with a quote from one of the main characters, Sydney Carton: a quiet conviction that “a far, far better thing” was still within reach. Our moment carries the same promise—and the same peril. Generative AI will not decide for us; it will merely magnify the systems we put around it. Lock in provenance badges, open-source tutors, and debate-by-default, and the scenario becomes "London": noisy, imperfect, yet mostly governed by evidence. Ignore those guard-rails and let anonymous echo-bots flood the lowest-skill corners of the internet, and we will have recreated "Paris" on the eve of the Terror—only this time the mobs can assemble at internet speed.

The gauges are already blinking. Which path we take depends on millions of small acts: the defaults software builders choose, the regulations legislators pass—or fail to pass—and the clicks each of us makes when we demand a source or share a rumor. The choice is still ours, and the window is still open, but history’s lesson is plain: cities—and countries—become the information systems they build. Let’s build the one where thinking has a fighting chance.

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