How Will Advanced Ai Systems Impact Democracy Alphaxiv Org

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 6, 2025, 10:29 AM

how will advanced ai systems impact democracy alphaxiv org

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 The last decade taught us painful lessons about how social media can reshape democracy: misinformation spreads faster than truth, online communities harden into echo chambers, and political divisions deepen as polarization grows.

Now, another wave of technology is transforming how voters learn about elections—only faster, at scale, and with far less visibility. Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, among others, are becoming the new vessels (and sometimes, arbiters) of political information. Our research suggests their influence is already rippling through our democracy. LLMs are being adopted at a pace that makes social media uptake look slow. At the same time, traffic to traditional news and search sites has declined. As the 2026 midterms near, more than half of Americans now have access to AI, which can be used to gather information about candidates, issues, and elections.

Meanwhile, researchers and firms are exploring the use of AI to simulate polling results or to understand how to synthesize voter opinions. These models may appear neutral—politically unbiased, and merely summarizing facts from different sources found in their training data or on the internet. At the same time, they operate as black boxes, designed and trained in ways users can’t see. Researchers are actively trying to unravel the question of whose opinions LLMs reflect. Given their immense power, prevalence, and ability to “personalize” information, these models have the potential to shape what voters believe about candidates, issues, and elections as a whole. And we don’t yet know the extent of that influence.

As artificial intelligence continues to advance at breakneck speed and world powers vie against each other in the AI arms race, democracies are searching for ways to control a technology that is transforming our... Read the following Journal of Democracy essays from leading AI experts on the dangers that lie ahead and how we might stave off a crisis. The Real Dangers of Generative AI Advanced AI faces twin perils: the collapse of democratic control over key state functions or the concentration of political and economic power in the hands of the few. Avoiding these risks will require new ways of governing. Danielle Allen and E. Glen Weyl

AI and Catastrophic Risk AI with superhuman abilities could emerge within the next few years, and there is currently no guarantee that we will be able to control them. We must act now to protect democracy, human rights, and our very existence. Yoshua Bengio How AI Threatens Democracy Generative AI can flood the media, internet, and even personal correspondence, sowing confusion for voters and government officials alike. If we fail to act, mounting mistrust will polarize our societies and tear at our institutions. Sarah Kreps and Doug Kriner

See citation below for complete author information. 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: 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.

How Will Advanced Ai Systems Impact Democracy Alphaxiv Org

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