Evaluating the Democratising Potential of AI-Enabled Digital Deliberation: a Sociotechnical Approach

Assuming that technology is flexible and depends on good design choices, some authors argue that, just as authoritarian regimes and governments use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to consolidate their power, AI can also be leveraged to enhance or strengthen democracy. Within democratic theory, the subfield that has most readily taken up this task is deliberative democracy. Moreover, various software tools for digital deliberation have recently emerged as areas of a possible socially beneficial incorporation of AI. However, the democratising potential of these AI implementations is uncertain and cannot be assessed solely according to the objectives pursued by their developers or promoters, nor through abstract conceptualisations of technology detached from a specific social and political context. Building on digital democracy and democratic innovation literatures, the article starts by arguing that evaluating the democratising potential of AI-based digital technologies requires a sociotechnical approach that incorporates both their design and technical features and their normative and empirical alignment with the social practices they automate. An evaluation framework that fails to capture this complexity risks falling into solutionist perspectives and uncritically overestimating the democratic potential of AI. The article examines the sociotechnical affordances of incorporating AI in digital deliberation and connects them to the legitimacy requirements of the practice of deliberation in democratic contexts. The aim is to determine whether the incorporation of AI favours the conditions through which deliberation is able to generate democratic legitimacy or whether, instead, it aligns with other objectives not directly linked to democratisation. Finally, through content and discourse analysis, as well as semi-structured interviews with designers and intermediary organisations, the article provides a preliminary review of existing AI-enabled software for digital deliberation.