In direct democracy, a decision still needs to be made on what to vote on. As an example, if you look at California propositions, these aren't necessarily all that well drafted. Often propositions are created by business interests and approved by people coming out of stores who aren't thinking very carefully about what petitions they sign.

And after that point, you're putting an algorithm is in charge of making the final decision. This isn't necessarily better than having a leader in charge, because the leader can maybe think of creative compromises and the algorithm can't.

If you study voting systems you'll see they all have flaws, and they are all very simple-minded algorithms compared to people. Whether they actually capture the "will of the people" is impossible to say since the "will of the people" isn't really a thing. There are just people with a lot of different opinions.