Ai S Real Dangers For Democracy

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 6, 2025, 11:10 AM

In 2024, observers worldwide braced for the electoral impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI). With those contests over, attention should shift to the longer-term risks AI poses to democracy. This essay predicts three such risks. First, AI-backed efforts to replace political communication may erode representative democracy. Second, AI may exacerbate trends toward the concentration of wealth and power, preserving only the façade of democracy. Third, economic trends in media and technology threaten to emaciate already weakened sources of trustworthy information.

Avoiding these outcomes will require policymakers to reduce their reliance on the perspectives of industry professionals. Dean Jackson is a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and the principal of Public Circle, LLC, a research consultancy focused on democracy, technology, and media. Samuel C. Woolley is associate professor of communication and holds the William S. Dietrich II Endowed Chair in Disinformation Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He is author of The Reality Game: How the Next Wave of Technology Will Break the Truth (2020).

Image Credit: Utku Ucrak/Anadolu via Getty Images Artificial Intelligence, Digital technology, Economic inequality Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing many sectors, from business to healthcare. But what about democracy? While AI offers exciting potential to enhance governance and improve services, it also poses serious risks to democratic systems worldwide. This technology is reshaping how people interact with political institutions, how policies are made, and how power is distributed across societies.

In this article, we’ll explore how AI is disrupting democracies, its challenges, and the opportunities it offers. AI has immense power to shape the future. It can analyze data, detect patterns, and help solve problems more efficiently. But it also brings a host of challenges. It threatens privacy, can manipulate public opinion, and may lead to authoritarian control. In democracies, these threats could undermine the very principles of fairness, transparency, and accountability.

Yet, AI also offers potential benefits, such as improved public services and greater citizen engagement. AI makes it easier than ever for governments and companies to track individual behavior. From facial recognition systems to data analysis tools, AI can monitor citizens on an unprecedented scale. In democracies, this could lead to serious privacy violations. Governments may use AI to analyze social media posts, search histories, or even predict behavior. In some countries, surveillance can feel like a constant, silent presence.

We must ask: can democracy thrive in a society where privacy is constantly under threat? These AI-driven technologies often lack transparency and accountability. In turn, they risk enabling governments to track and monitor their citizens more easily, even in democratic societies. Though many democratic nations have privacy laws, AI can slip through these cracks, creating a surveillance state. As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly intertwined with everyday life, its use in the political sphere has expanded dramatically. From campaigns to propaganda, AI has been employed by countries worldwide for both beneficial and corrupt purposes.

The greatest threat AI poses is its ability to blur the boundaries of reality, creating a political atmosphere where people struggle to discern what is genuine and what is fabricated. While AI offers immense potential, its misuse presents significant political dangers, including threats to democracy, privacy, and global stability. The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Modern Politics AI has applications throughout modern politics, including political campaigns, governance, and decision-making. In political campaigns, advertising agencies have turned to AI to amplify their messaging. AI can generate text, images, videos, and speech from a single prompt, composing campaign emails and fundraising proposals to reach the masses.

It also assists in the day-to-day governance tasks of elected officials, such as exacerbating discriminatory policing patterns and enabling passive surveillance. In Washington, D.C., 20 different agencies use AI and automated decision-making for critical decisions, such as determining who should receive public benefits or access public housing (Electronic Privacy Information Center). The 2024 presidential elections showcased the extensive use of AI. Voter targeting emerged as a powerful tactic, particularly by the Trump campaign, which used algorithms to analyze voter preferences and susceptibilities. This allowed the campaign to deliver customized messages through social media and other platforms. AI also played a role in polling, offering real-time insights into voter opinions by analyzing online conversations and conducting surveys.

By processing various data points, AI predicted election outcomes with remarkable accuracy. Beyond just campaigns, AI is increasingly used in governance. Governments worldwide are adopting AI to streamline bureaucratic processes, improve public services, and enhance decision-making. However, this reliance on AI raises concerns about transparency and accountability. For instance, automated systems used to allocate resources or enforce laws may inadvertently perpetuate biases, leading to unequal treatment of citizens. Virginia Eubanks is a journalist, writer and political scientist at the University at Albany, State University of New York.

Her most recent book is Automating Inequality (2018). Individuals are picked out on a screen in a demonstration of facial-recognition technology in Shanghai, China. Credit: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg/Getty Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders MIT Press (2025) The tsunami of writing on artificial intelligence tends towards either bald hype or panicked dystopianism.

Proponents say that AI will revolutionize health care, drive business growth and become our new best friend. But for its critics, AI could cause massive unemployment, perpetuate fake news and pose an extinction risk to humankind. Why an overreliance on AI-driven modelling is bad for science Nicol Turner Lee, Joseph B. Keller, Cameron F. Kerry, Aaron Klein, Anton Korinek, Mark MacCarthy, Mark Muro, Chinasa T.

Okolo, Courtney C. Radsch, John Villasenor, Darrell M. West, Tom Wheeler, Andrew W. Wyckoff, Rashawn Ray, Mishaela Robison Melanie W. Sisson, Colin Kahl, Sun Chenghao, Xiao Qian

Norman Eisen, Renée Rippberger, Jonathan Katz Since the explosion of generative artificial intelligence over the past two years, the technology has demeaned or defamed opponents and – for the first time, officials and experts said – begun to have an... Free and easy to use, AI tools have generated a flood of fake photos and videos of candidates or supporters saying things they did not say or appearing in places they were not –... The technology has amplified social and partisan divisions and bolstered antigovernment sentiment, especially on the far right, which has surged in recent elections in Germany, Poland and Portugal. In Romania, a Russian influence operation using AI tainted the first round of last year’s presidential election, according to government officials. A court there nullified that result, forcing a new vote last month and bringing a new wave of fabrications.

It was the first big election in which AI played a decisive role in the outcome. It is unlikely to be the last. As the technology improves, officials and experts warn, it is undermining faith in electoral integrity and eroding the political consensus necessary for democratic societies to function.

Ai S Real Dangers For Democracy

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