In this Decoder podcast interview, Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel speaks with Harvard historian and New Yorker writer Dr Jill Lepore about her forthcoming book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, out on 25 August. Lepore argues that society's drive to measure and quantify everything, from data collection to AI-driven systems, is fundamentally dehumanising, flattening human concerns into abstractions that now shape not just apps and technology but politics and governance itself. The conversation matters because it frames current unease about AI and Big Tech's influence as part of a much longer historical pattern of institutional power adapting to new technologies.

Lepore traces the "artificial state" concept from ancient censuses through 1930s political polling to what she sees as the pivotal shift of the 1980s, when personal computing and microtargeting enabled unprecedented data-driven control over advertising and politics. Patel pushes back on her pessimism about the internet, noting it enabled democratised access and new careers, including his own. The two also discuss where Lepore finds hope for the future, notably in younger generations pushing back against AI, citing college graduates booing AI company executives at graduation ceremonies as a sign of meaningful resistance.