Artificial Intelligence And Democracy Pathway To Progress Or Decline

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 6, 2025, 11:08 AM

artificial intelligence and democracy pathway to progress or decline

UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, adopted by all Member States in November 2021, is the first global policy framework for artificial intelligence (AI) and outlines different aspects of this technology that... The initial considerations of the Recommendation outline the potential ramifications of AI across diverse domains, notably its implications for democracy. This report builds on these analyses and recommendations, aligning with the core values and principles outlined in the Recommendation. It delves into the current and potential impact of artificial intelligence on democracy and the benefits that both artificial intelligence and digitalization, in general, could bring to enhancing collective decision-making processes. This analysis is structured around four key topics: Finally, this report offers recommendations for the democratic governance of artificial intelligence aimed at mitigating neative impacts and fostering a more democratic approach to AI governance.

Langdon Winner’s classic essay ‘Do Artifacts Have Politics?’ resists a widespread but naïve view of the role of technology in human life: that technology is neutral, and all depends on use.Footnote 1 He does... Instead, Winner distinguishes two ways for artefacts to have ‘political qualities’. First, devices or systems might be means for establishing patterns of power or authority, but the design is flexible: such patterns can turn out one way or another. An example is traffic infrastructure, which can assist many people but also keep parts of the population in subordination, say, if they cannot reach suitable workplaces. Secondly, devices or systems are strongly, perhaps unavoidably, tied to certain patterns of power. Winner’s example is atomic energy, which requires industrial, scientific, and military elites to provide and protect energy sources.

Artificial Intelligence (AI), I argue, is political the way traffic infrastructure is: It can greatly strengthen democracy, but only with the right efforts. Understanding ‘the politics of AI’ is crucial since Xi Jinping’s China loudly champions one-party rule as a better fit for our digital century. AI is a key component in the contest between authoritarian and democratic rule. Unlike conventional programs, AI algorithms learn by themselves. Programmers provide data, which a set of methods, known as machine learning, analyze for trends and inferences. Owing to their sophistication and sweeping applications, these technologies are poised to dramatically alter our world.

Specialized AI is already broadly deployed. At the high end, one may think of AI mastering Chess or Go. More commonly we encounter it in smartphones (Siri, Google Translate, curated newsfeeds), home devices (Alexa, Google Home, Nest), personalized customer services, or GPS systems. Specialized AI is used by law enforcement, the military, in browser searching, advertising and entertainment (e.g., recommender systems), medical diagnostics, logistics, finance (from assessing credit to flagging transactions), in speech recognition producing transcripts, trade... Governments track people using AI in facial, voice, or gait recognition. Smart cities analyze traffic data in real time or design services.

COVID-19 accelerated use of AI in drug discovery. Natural language processing – normally used for texts – interprets genetic changes in viruses. Amazon Web Services, Azure, or Google Cloud’s low- and no-code offerings could soon let people create AI applications as easily as websites.Footnote 2 General AI approximates human performance across many domains. Once there is general AI smarter than we are, it could produce something smarter than itself, and so on, perhaps very fast. That moment is the singularity, an intelligence explosion with possibly grave consequences.

We are nowhere near anything like that. Imitating how mundane human tasks combine agility, reflection, and interaction has proven challenging. However, ‘nowhere near’ means ‘in terms of engineering capacities’. A few breakthroughs might accelerate things enormously. Inspired by how millions of years of evolution have created the brain, neural nets have been deployed in astounding ways in machine learning. Such research indicates to many observers that general AI will emerge eventually.Footnote 3

This essay is located at the intersection of political philosophy, philosophy of technology, and political history. My purpose is to reflect on medium and long-term prospects and challenges for democracy from AI, emphasizing how critical a stage this is. Social theorist Bruno Latour, a key figure in Science, Technology and Society Studies, has long insisted no entity matters in isolation but attains meaning through numerous, changeable relations. Human activities tend to depend not only on more people than the protagonists who stand out, but also on non-human entities. Latour calls such multitudes of relations actor-networks.Footnote 4 This perspective takes the materiality of human affairs more seriously than is customary, the ways they critically involve artefacts, devices, or systems. This standpoint helps gauge AI’s impact on democracy.

Political theorists treat democracy as an ideal or institutional framework, instead of considering its materiality. Modern democracies involve structures for collective choice that periodically empower relatively few people to steer the social direction for everybody. As in all forms of governance, technology shapes how this unfolds. Technology explains how citizens obtain information that delineates their participation (often limited to voting) and frees up people’s time to engage in collective affairs to begin with. Devices and mechanisms permeate campaigning and voting. Technology shapes how politicians communicate and bureaucrats administer decisions.

Specialized AI changes the materiality of democracy, not just in the sense that independently given actors deploy new tools. AI changes how collective decision making unfolds and what its human participants are like: how they see themselves in relation to their environment, what relationships they have and how those are designed, and generally... arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community?

Learn more about arXivLabs. You have full access to this open access article When discussing the impact of AI on democracy, the debate predominantly centers on its potential threats, such as misinformation and polarization. However, the role of AI in addressing the democratic crisis is more nuanced. This paper examines three ways that AI might impact the crisis of democracy and discusses the conditions for which these scenarios are more likely to materialize. Firstly, AI could exacerbate this crisis by degrading the public sphere, exacerbating authoritarian rule and increasing power asymmetries.

Second, AI could alleviate some aspects of the crisis of democracy by improving public services, rationalizing public debate, or paving the way for new forms of collective participation. Thirdly, AI could overcome this crisis by paving the way for new forms of government beyond the current representative systems. If AI will exacerbate, alleviate, or overcome the crisis of democracy will depend not just on AI itself, but rather on the complex sociotechnical relationship between technology and the cultural, social, economic, legal, and... Therefore, we should avoid an essentialist perspective that consider “democracy” and “AI” as givens and embrace a more sociotechnical perspective that looks at how these two elements mutually influence each other. Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript. Numerous scholars have debated the impact of digital technology on society and political systems.

Recently, pessimistic and more critical perspectives have gained prominence, extending beyond academic and intellectual circles. In the United States, 78% of the population distrusts big tech companies, and 64% believe that social media has negatively impacted society, with only 10% perceiving its impact as positive [112]. Artificial intelligence is no exception. Concerns about this technology have grown in recent years, with 52% of U.S. citizens expressing more worry than excitement about AI, compared to just 10% who feel the opposite [111]. The debate over what constitutes artificial intelligence is vast and cannot be fully addressed here.

Many scholars argue that comparisons with human intelligence are misleading, primarily because AI applications operate in fundamentally different ways from the human mind. [20, 45]. As Luciano Floridi suggested [25], AI is a “shortcut” for generically referring to different disciplines, services and products. Therefore, a monolithic definition risks being misleading. However, we can embrace an internationally recognized working definition such as that proposed by the OECD, which claims that: The interplay between artificial intelligence (AI) development and democracy has been of significant debate.

While some scholars suggest that AI expansion can enhance democratic health by improving public services, fostering citizen trust, and boosting economic opportunities, others argue that AI poses a substantial threat to democratic values. A comprehensive review of the literature reveals a scarcity of comparative studies that evaluate AI’s impact on democracy across multiple nations, with most existing research focusing on qualitative or theoretical discussions. Addressing these gaps, this research employs a two-way fixed effect model to evaluate the impact of AI development on democratic health in 72 countries that have developed and published their national AI strategies between... The findings indicate that AI development is negatively associated with democracy levels. This means that higher AI development is associated with lower levels of democracy. This study also highlights the importance of political factors.

Countries with well-established parliamentary systems, rather than presidential systems, may be better equipped to manage and mitigate the negative impacts of AI on democracy.

Artificial Intelligence And Democracy Pathway To Progress Or Decline

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