Why AI Technosolutionism Harms Democracy and Deliberation: The EU, Citizens’ Assemblies and the Habermas Machine

Technology has recently entered the scene of deliberative democracy, both as a subject of deliberation and as a way to improve deliberative processes. The hegemonic position in this debate within the deliberative democracy community appears to be that, while it is not a bulletproof solution, technology—and more specifically AI—holds the potential to make deliberation and democracy better. The article takes stock of the latest developments in relation to technology and deliberation, focusing specifically on the European Citizens’ Panels and Google’s Habermas Machine. We argue that the current trend is characterised by technosolutionism, and that introducing technology as a ‘solution’ to ‘fix’ some of the ‘problems’ within the deliberative democracy community reinforces its depoliticisation and disintermediation. Deliberative technosolutionism moves the discussion away from the systemic desirability of minipublics, sidelines a mass politics conception of democracy, and leaves unquestioned the political economy of AI. By contrast, democracy needs to be oriented towards mass politics and collective actors rather than reproducing the narrow conception of democracy and deliberation upon which minipublics are built.