Stewardship as Priesthood Model

In The You On AI Field Guide

The distinction between competence and legitimacy is foundational. Under the priesthood model, engineers, researchers, and executives make decisions about how AI is developed, deployed, and regulated. They consult ethicists. They publish safety research. They establish internal review boards. All of these activities are genuine and some admirable. But the political structure remains unchanged: people with knowledge decide, and people without knowledge are governed by those decisions. Knowledge confers obligation in Mouffe's framework as well — but the obligation is not to decide wisely for others. It is to make knowledge accessible, creating the conditions under which non-experts can participate meaningfully in decisions about the systems that shape their lives.

The objection that most people do not understand AI well enough to participate meaningfully is empirically true and circular. People do not understand AI because the institutional structures that would make such understanding accessible do not exist. The priesthood has not built the educational infrastructure, public forums, accessible documentation, or participatory governance mechanisms that would enable non-expert engagement. It has built advisory boards, ethics panels, and safety teams that operate within the priesthood structure — experts advising other experts. The architecture of expertise is self-reinforcing, and it presents its own persistence as evidence of its necessity.

Danielle Arets, in a submission to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, argued from an explicitly Mouffean perspective that artistic practices could serve as the bridge between expert knowledge and democratic participation. Democratic participation does not require technical expertise; it requires accessible representations of what technologies do, what choices are embedded in their design, and what alternatives exist.

The priest who serves well is still a priest. The system that depends on the priest's wisdom has substituted expertise for democracy. The distinction matters enormously for the AI transition, which will reshape economic life, educational development, and political participation for billions. The transition deserves governance that is democratic in structure, not merely benevolent in intention.

Origin

The priesthood metaphor has a long history in political philosophy, from Plato's philosopher-kings through the Progressive Era's scientific management to contemporary technocracy. Segal deploys it self-critically; Mouffe uses it as a diagnostic term for the structural problem rather than as an aspiration to be realized more fully.

Key Ideas

Competence without legitimacy. Expertise does not authorize governance; democratic process does.

Self-authorization is the signature move. The priesthood's claim to authority is circular — it derives from the understanding only the priesthood possesses.

Obligation is distributive, not substitutive. Knowledge creates an obligation to make knowledge accessible, not to decide on behalf of the uninformed.

Ethics panels are not democracy. Internal governance structures serve the priesthood's interests, however sincerely staffed.