The group chat is humming. Everyone’s engaged. The memes are on point. Reactions are flying. The energy is good – until someone replies with a green bubble.

We’ve all been there: The green bubble “kills the vibe.” Nothing works quite right anymore. The incompatibilities are on full display.

See, the green bubbles are people willing to sacrifice order for freedom. Green bubbles love that their operating system is open – it is customizable. You can make anything, install anything, do anything. Ask a green bubble and they’ll tell you: They love that there are no rules. They’ll also admit their experience isn’t quite as smooth as yours.

That’s because Apple, the creator of the blue bubble, is well known for top-down curation. They decide what enters their system and how it behaves, and the result so many iPhone users enjoy is that their phone (and all of their connected Apple devices) just work. It’s a harmonious experience. To put it simply, blue bubbles don’t break the chat.

I’ve long had this theory about our own country’s operating system. We have built a green bubble democracy. It promises freedom and flexibility, but for my generation and the ones after me, it has consistently delivered breakdowns. The mythology says the best ideas will rise, the people will decide, and our politics will reflect the best of us. But the reality we see all around us is different: gridlock, rage bait, and lobbyists writing legislation in the back rooms of a government no one trusts.

We think we’re living in a curated system of order. What we’re actually living in is a free-for-all that punishes nuance, rewards sensationalism, and guarantees that nothing ever quite syncs up.

Suddenly, AI shows up and people are worried it will make everything worse. They say it’s going to overwhelm us with misinformation. They bring up deep fakes, synthetic discourse, and digital propaganda at scale. That logic is based on a hard truth: We, as humans, are biologically ill-equipped to handle the enormous scope of modern information.

That’s why we simplify it. We categorize new information into comfort zones. We shrink the world into tribes and echo chambers just to stay upright.

AI does the opposite. The more information it has, the better it gets. It doesn’t need a party. It doesn’t need a narrative. It doesn’t need a safe space to make sense of the chaos. It consumes complexity and converts it into clarity. It sees what we can’t in the vastness. It finds the patterns without breaking under the weight of scale. Remarkably, it becomes more accurate, more predictive, and ultimately more useful.

And now, AI is forcing a question we may not be ready to ask: What if AI isn’t the green bubble showing up to break the chat? What if it’s offering us a chance to go blue?

For the first time in history, we have something capable of digesting the full scope of human data – every law, every historical trend, every interconnected policy implication – and proposing the best solution forward. This would not be based on ideology or party, but on our collective agreement and will.

Imagine a completely new operating system for government – not a strongman, not a dictator, not a cabal or shadowy committee. This would be a system trained on our behavior, aligned with our values, and immune to our worst instincts. It doesn’t get overwhelmed or corrupted by special interests. It doesn’t seek power. It just operates for the greater good and the American way.

I’m not naive enough to ignore the fact that AI could go in some dystopian directions, but it’s not like things aren’t trending dystopian already. Let’s be honest: Our broken system is beyond fixing itself. The divides are too deep. The incentives are too broken. The path we are on is not moving toward some civic renaissance; it is moving toward collapse.

Radicalization. Authoritarianism. Permanent fractionalization.

We’re not far from red and blue states fracturing into disparate regions that function like separate countries. The world is moving too fast to make sense of, and we’re being convinced by an onslaught of algorithms and doom-scrolling that we no longer share interests, values, or goals with our fellow countrymen.

That isn’t hyperbole. That’s our trajectory.

But, we have the option to build something smarter – something based on our commonality and shared interests. Something that actually works.

What if AI doesn’t overwhelm democracy, but instead finally makes it functional? What if it helps us move past scarcity, constant conflict, and the idea that work and worth are the same thing? What if AI allows us to build a society not around survival, but around actualization?

At this point, AI may be the only thing fast, flexible, and uncorrupted enough to get us there.

Of course, people will resist. We love our dysfunction – it is America. There is always a new green bubble to blame.

But maybe it’s time to admit the chat is broken. And maybe, just maybe, we choose to give ourselves an upgrade.

Brian Athey serves as chief creative officer at PushAI.

Read the full article in RealClear Politics.