> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.projectmiddleground.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # What If the Machines Save Us From Ourselves? - URL: https://www.projectmiddleground.com/articles/what-if-the-machines-save-us-from-ourselves/ - Published: 2026-11-05T02:22:16.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-05T02:22:16.000Z - Author: Brad Spirrison ### *Chicago, the Second Big Bang and Humanity's Next Evolution* Twenty years ago, Americans delivered a Democratic wave that helped propel a little-known Illinois senator toward the White House. This week, they delivered another. J.B. Pritzker has won a third term as governor. Democrats are taking control of Congress. Rahm Emanuel is contemplating another presidential adventure. And Donald Trump has two more years to remind everyone why we've spent the last decade arguing about Donald Trump. The temptation to settle scores will be enormous. Some scores deserve settling. Constitutional accountability matters. But here's a question worth asking before we devote another two years to fighting over the last ten: **What if humanity is running out of time to make peace with itself?** Not because our differences don't matter. Because something extraordinary—and potentially existential—is happening while we're fighting. ### **The Second Big Bang** In an October 25 New York Times [column](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/25/opinion/ai-second-big-bang.html?smid=fb-share&fbclid=IwY2xjawVYpylleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBwZG9mBXNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR%5FwnjzPNKOqU9o4UDo8r2U%5FIE%5FMH-gEKeBBb0XdQODmnrWxx7wXV4kLiRh5rQ%5Faem%5FsuOmskzAbcwWlzmExCONjA&ref=projectmiddleground.com), Thomas Friedman described artificial intelligence as the "Second Big Bang." His prescription was even more provocative: humanity must learn to "detribalize, depolarize and detoxify" at unprecedented speed and scale. Quite an assignment for a species that invented agriculture, democracy, antibiotics, jazz, nuclear weapons and two world wars. Artificial intelligence didn't create humanity's capacity for cruelty. We managed that ourselves. Long before Facebook, people organized around race, religion, nationality, territory and inherited grievances. We created scarcity where abundance was possible. Built institutions to distribute opportunity, then erected barriers to protect it. The machines inherited our contradictions. Now we're training increasingly sophisticated systems on the accumulated record of human behavior. And wondering why they occasionally resemble us. ### **The Audacity of an Algorithm** On July 27, 2004, a young Illinois politician named Barack Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention. "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is the United States of America." An extraordinary proposition from a Chicago politician. Especially considering Chicago's history. Just five months earlier, a Harvard undergraduate named Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook. One man articulated a vision of national unity. Another began building a platform that would eventually help reorganize how billions of people understood themselves, their communities and their enemies. The irony is almost too perfect. Obama imagined Americans transcending tribal identities. Facebook's eventual business model found enormous value in identifying, sorting and engaging those very tribes. Political campaigns learned that anger raises money. Platforms learned that conflict captures attention. Audiences discovered the pleasures of having their prejudices confirmed. The technology didn't invent the instincts. It helped industrialize them. My teacher Neil Postman would have recognized the deeper problem: technologies don't merely deliver information. They reshape the cultural conditions under which we decide what's true, valuable and worth believing. ### **Chicago's Tribal Knowledge** In 1983, Harold Washington defeated incumbent Jane Byrne and Richard M. Daley in the Democratic mayoral primary. Washington's election as Chicago's first Black mayor was historic. So was the resistance. The Council Wars exposed a city profoundly divided by race, neighborhood, power and patronage. And these were largely Democrats fighting Democrats. Four decades later, our political vocabulary has evolved considerably. Our underlying disagreements remain. Race. Class. Public safety. Schools. Housing. Immigration. Who receives investment? Who gets protection? Who gets heard? Some resources genuinely are scarce. Others become scarce because institutions, incentives and accumulated power determine who can access them. Chicago has mastered both the creation and unequal distribution of wealth. That's not merely a political problem. It's a human one. ### **The Happy Accident** Now consider the predicament. We've created machines that may eventually exceed human capabilities across much of intellectual life. We don't know when, how broadly or with what consequences. But the possibility raises an unfamiliar question. **What if protecting human autonomy requires us to become better at being human?** Evolution equipped us for competition and cooperation. Culture, markets and institutions determine which instincts get rewarded. We breathe. Eat. Love. Fear. Protect our children. We also accumulate, exclude, dominate and occasionally destroy. Technology won't automatically resolve those contradictions. Neither will another election. But the possibility of relinquishing consequential decisions to increasingly capable machines might finally provide an incentive to confront them. ### **We Make Markets** Before Silicon Valley organized digital commerce, Chicago organized markets for grain, meat, merchandise, futures and financial risk. A market doesn't require buyers and sellers to like each other. It requires trustworthy information, understandable prices, enforceable rules, incentives to transact and mechanisms to settle disputes. That's a remarkable human invention. Strangers cooperating at scale. Not necessarily equitably. Chicago's commercial achievements coexist with exploitation, segregation and extraordinary concentrations of wealth. Markets can reward exclusion as readily as cooperation when the rules allow it. But they also provide something tribal politics frequently cannot. A practical reason to negotiate with somebody whose worldview differs from your own. Technology platforms won't save us simply by connecting more people. Markets—deliberately structured around human incentives, costs, biases, accountability and mutual benefit—offer a more tangible mechanism for cooperation. ### **The Art of the Possible** Twenty years ago, Democrats swept Congress. Three months later, on February 10, 2007, Obama announced his presidential candidacy in Springfield. Today, newly reelected Governor J.B. Pritzker and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel are among those considering what comes after Trump. Both understand the language of dealmaking. Here's a challenge for them and everyone anticipating 2028. What can we accomplish in 2027 that doesn't depend entirely on humiliating our opponents? Not kumbaya. Not surrendering principles. Not excusing corruption. Bring researchers, businesses, workers, journalists, communities and public officials together. In person. Establish evidence. Surface grievances. Understand incentives. Negotiate agreements. Measure outcomes. Repeat. Chicago has the institutions, capital, scientific infrastructure and political scars to develop such experiments. ### **The Next Evolution** Perhaps AI will cure diseases, accelerate discovery and create abundance beyond anything our ancestors imagined. Perhaps it will magnify our divisions and threaten our autonomy. Probably it will expose uncomfortable truths about ourselves. The *Star Trek* future isn't simply better machinery. It's humanity learning to cooperate across differences while retaining individuality, freedom and disagreement. That's the harder invention. Maybe the machines won't save us. Maybe the possibility that they could surpass us is the happy accident that finally persuades us to save ourselves. **The next great human innovation may have nothing to do with technology.** It may be learning how to live with one another. And Chicago, of all places, ought to know how to make that deal.