This article was written by Daniel Berliner, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the London School of Economics, in the Boston Review. The complete article is available online with the introductory paragraph followed by excerpts on Professor Lily Tsai’s work below. 

With the recent rapid development of AI tools, many are hailing the promise of digital technologies to enhance civic engagement and improve governance and democracy. Political theorist Hélène Landemore, for example, argues that “AI has the potential to usher in a more inclusive, participatory, and deliberative form of democracy, including at the global scale.”

Many are hailing the promise of digital technologies to enhance civic engagement and improve democracy. Is this optimism justified?

She is far from alone. Lily Tsai and colleagues at MIT’s Governance Lab say that “online platforms and generative AI give us extraordinary new opportunities to participate in discussions and policy deliberations with each other at scale.” Nils Gilman and Ben Cerveny suggest that “a technologically enabled form of continuous democratic engagement offers the promise of a government that is simultaneously more effective, more efficient and more directly responsive to the will of the public.” Beth Noveck, the first Chief AI Strategist of New Jersey, testified to a U.S. Senate committee about “AI’s unmatched potential to analyze public sentiment, manage feedback, and scale engagement across diverse demographics.” And for some this is also a business opportunity: a May 2023 report found that “the market for online participation and deliberation in Europe is expected to grow to €300mn in the next five years.

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Read the full piece at Boston Review.

Photo by Elissa Garcia on Unsplash.