The Impact Of Advanced Ai Systems On Democracy Nature

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 5, 2025, 11:32 AM

the impact of advanced ai systems on democracy nature

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 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. 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. See citation below for complete author information. 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... 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.

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Competing Interests: The Following Authors Are Full- Or Part-time Remunerated

(OpenAI), A.P. (Fundamental AI Research (FAIR), Meta). C.S. And K.H.

(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.