We seem to be caught in a loop that AI will either save or ruin democracy.
At one extreme, politics scholar David Altman worries that artificial intelligence is leading the world toward an “AI-driven political system in which approval is manufactured, public debate is hollowed out and citizens have no meaningful voice.”
On the other hand, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his head of research, Andrew Sorota, dream that “we must instead use AI to reinvigorate democracy, making it more responsive, more deliberative and more worthy of public trust.”
As upcoming elections in the United States, Canada and Brazil fuel speculation about AI’s impact, I have focused on a deeper question: why is the future of democracy so tied to the future of digital technologies?
How we regard political systems
