Machine Politics and Democracy. A Historical Perspective

It is a paradox that data scientists have discarded the previous ideal of `all-in-one´ (AGI) robot and instead focused on problem-specific digital applications and solutions, but the artificial machine-based reality and ‘extended humanness’ with add-ons is closer and closer to our lives. The advancement of digitalisation and artificial intelligence has raised concerns on alienation - participation, control - liberty, free transfer of big data – citizens’ right to control their data, transparency and privacy… It seems that digitalisation is a threat to democracy and democratization. At the same time, the new possibilities of faster computing, learning networks and exoskeletons are praised. The debate on technological advancement is both polarised and politicised. In this paper, I shall compare the debates over democracy during the eras of automatization and artificial intelligence. I maintain that although the technologies are different, the arguments for and against democracy and machine-assisted decision making remain the same. On the one hand, democracy is not real democracy, it is slow inefficient, non-scientific, non-objective form of governing. Democratic decision making does not lead to the best possible decisions. Instead, machines or computers are accurate, fast and objective, they do not make simple mistakes. On the other hand, democracy is the best possible form of government, democratization is linked with political equality and participation, it legitimates political decisions, it is an elementary part of human agency… I shall refer to scholars from Karl Marx and Edward Bellamy to contemporary modern scholars on this field. The vexing relationship between human bodies, mind or actions and machines is not a novelty. In this paper, I shall examine the expectations people had and nowadays have on computer-assisted political processes and decision making. These expectations also reveal what is, or was, concerned as problematic in democratic decision making in general.