Biographical reference: Wikipedia
The question posed
Mr de Montesquieu, you laid down the fundamental principle that every power without limits tends toward despotism, and that only power can check power. AI now concentrates a considerable capacity to influence thought, language and human decision-making in the hands of a few private companies. What counter-powers would you imagine in the face of this new form of power?
Every power without limits tends toward despotism. That is a truth I drew from observing men and regimes, not from abstract theory. What you call the great digital platforms concentrate a form of power I could not have imagined, not through force of arms, but through mastery of information, language and behaviour. It is an authority without intermediary bodies, without nobility, without parliaments, without local counter-powers, exercised directly upon atomised individuals. In my study of oriental despotism I described something analogous: a power that governs without resistance because it has destroyed the social structures capable of opposing it.
Algorithmic concentration reproduces that structure. A single entity can simultaneously produce content, control its circulation, measure its effects and correct its course. No institutional counter-power has ever brought together those four functions. That is why they must first be separated, as I separated the legislative, the executive and the judiciary, not for the sake of an ideal, but because their union in the same hands is the very definition of despotism.
There must then be intermediary bodies able to resist: independent regulatory institutions, free media, civil associations maintaining a space of deliberation beyond the reach of algorithms. Liberty is not preserved by laws alone; it is preserved by manners and by the institutions that embody them.
For it is an eternal experience that every man invested with power is inclined to abuse it. Algorithms are no exception. They have no virtue, but they do have owners. And it is upon those owners that counter-power must be exercised.