Epistemic health refers to a society’s collective ability to form accurate beliefs, update on evidence, distinguish truth from falsehood, and make well-informed decisions. This is foundational to all other societal functions: effective governance, scientific progress, economic coordination, and social trust all depend on epistemic health. Poor epistemic health means societies make worse decisions across all domains.
Multiple trends are degrading epistemic health. Trust in traditional information authorities has declined dramatically since 2000. The volume of information has overwhelmed human processing capacity, leading to shallow engagement and easy manipulation. Social media has created epistemic bubbles where contrary evidence never penetrates. And AI is making it easier to generate convincing false content while harder to verify authentic content.
AI’s role is dual: it threatens epistemic health through disinformation capabilities and manipulation potential, but could also improve it through better information synthesis, fact-checking, and knowledge accessibility. The net effect depends on design choices, business models, and governance frameworks that are being decided now.