Artificial Intelligence's Growing Influence Raises Power and Evidence Concerns

The rapid expansion of generative AI has made information abundant while reliable evidence has become scarce. As AI tools can produce text, code, legal language and market analyses instantly, the ability to verify and contextualize those outputs has not kept pace. The shift means that influence increasingly depends on the scarce resource of human judgment rather than sheer computational power.

Cost reductions have accelerated model availability: the expense of running a comparable AI model fell about 280‑fold in two years, allowing open‑weight versions to appear within months of frontier releases. Although open models proliferate, closed‑source systems still generally outperform them. A public database now lists more than 1,700 court cases involving fabricated AI citations, underscoring the legal and societal risks of unverified AI‑generated content. The emerging power structure therefore favors those who can exercise responsible judgment over those who merely own the underlying hardware or capital.