University of Kwazulu-Natal

How Will Advanced Ai Systems Impact Democracy Acemap

Bonisiwe Shabane
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how will advanced ai systems impact democracy acemap

Nature Human Behaviour (2025)Cite this article Advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems capable of generating humanlike text and multimodal content are now widely available. Here we ask what impact this will have on the democratic process. We consider the consequences of AI for citizens’ ability to make educated and competent choices about political representatives and issues (epistemic impacts). We explore how AI might be used to destabilize or support the mechanisms, including elections, by which democracy is implemented (material impacts). Finally, we discuss whether AI will strengthen or weaken the principles on which democracy is based (foundational impacts).

The arrival of new AI systems clearly poses substantial challenges for democracy. However, we argue that AI systems also offer new opportunities to educate and learn from citizens, strengthen public discourse, help people to find common ground, and reimagine how democracies might work better. This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription Professor of Public Policy, James Bryant Conant University Professor

Director, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation; Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government Professor of the Practice of Public Policy, HKS; Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Computer Science, SEAS Creating a healthy digital civic infrastructure ecosystem means not just deploying technology for the sake of efficiency, but thoughtfully designing tools built to enhance democratic engagement from connection to action. Public engagement has long been too time-consuming and costly for governments to sustain, but AI offers tools to make participation more systematic and impactful. Our new Reboot Democracy Workshop Series replaces lectures with hands-on sessions that teach the practical “how-to’s” of AI-enhanced engagement. Together with leading practitioners and partners at InnovateUS and the Allen Lab at Harvard, we’ll explore how AI can help institutions tap the collective intelligence of our communities more efficiently and effectively.

Advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems capable of generating humanlike text and multimodal content are now widely available. Here we ask what impact this will have on the democratic process. We consider the consequences of AI for citizens' ability to make educated and competent choices about political representatives and issues (epistemic impacts). We explore how AI might be used to destabilize or support the mechanisms, including elections, by which democracy is implemented (material impacts). Finally, we discuss whether AI will strengthen or weaken the principles on which democracy is based (foundational impacts). The arrival of new AI systems clearly poses substantial challenges for democracy.

However, we argue that AI systems also offer new opportunities to educate and learn from citizens, strengthen public discourse, help people to find common ground, and reimagine how democracies might work better. Competing interests: The following authors are full- or part-time remunerated employees of commercial developers of AI technology: M. Bakker, I.G., N.M., M.H.T. and M. Botvinick (Google DeepMind), E.D. and D.G.

(Anthropic) and T.E. (OpenAI), A.P. (Fundamental AI Research (FAIR), Meta). C.S. and K.H. are part-time remunerated government employees (at the UK AI Security Institute).

D.S. and S.H. are employees of the non-profit organization Collective Intelligence Project. A.O. is an employee of the AI & Democracy Foundation. E.S.

is an employee of Demos. None of these employers had any role in the preparation of the manuscript or the decision to publish. The remaining authors declare no competing interests. Advanced AI systems capable of generating humanlike text and multimodal content are now widely available. In this paper, we discuss the impacts that generative artificial intelligence may have on democratic processes. We consider the consequences of AI for citizens’ ability to make informed choices about political representatives and issues (epistemic impacts).

We ask how AI might be used to destabilise or support democratic mechanisms like elections (material impacts). Finally, we discuss whether AI will strengthen or weaken democratic principles (foundational impacts). It is widely acknowledged that new AI systems could pose significant challenges for democracy. However, it has also been argued that generative AI offers new opportunities to educate and learn from citizens, strengthen public discourse, help people find common ground, and to reimagine how democracies might work better.

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