Obama says drift towards extremism 'not inevitable'

But the 65-year-old said that the world and its leaders are going to need to find mechanisms and new institutions to allow rigorous debate and disagreement while helping people sort out basic facts.He said: "If I had a blame pie for why politics is so polarised and why we're seeing a rise of populism in many places, it's because of that information that is going into our brains every day."Obama said this resulted in young people feeling discouraged, and that "it's not a healthy diet that our brains are on at the moment".He added that he feared this could become even worse with AI making it hard to distinguish between what is true and what is not, something he believes will make democracy hard to function.Obama says people forget lessons from the pastSpeaking about hope, Obama was asked if he still believed in a Martin Luther King Jr phrase he quoted years ago, about the arm of the moral universe being long, but ultimately bending towards justice.The former president said that he still stands by the quote and argued that hope is an active "almost theological" choice people must make.He said: "It is a decision about how do we face and embrace this finite amount of time we have on the planet."