Enhancing Deliberation Through AI: Deliberative Requirements and Epistemological Concerns

Deliberative settings have usually failed to include people who struggled to express themselves using formal argumentation and rhetoric. This deficit has generated a tension between the principle of argumentation stating that formal argumentation should be maximised promoting public dialogue based on reasons and arguments, and the principle of inclusion holding that all those affected by the outcomes of the decisions should participate in deliberative decision-making processes. To reconcile both principles and overcome feasibility and practical barriers at deliberative settings, some suggestions and experiments using disruptive technologies, in particular artificial intelligence, have been conducted recently. In theory, disruptive technologies should enable deliberation to get closer to the classic ideal, i.e., to design deliberative processes fostering free and public reasoning among individuals. From mass online deliberation (MOD) to text simplification via natural language processing, and using AI for moderation to increase consensus, AI tools have been a source of new ideas and opportunities to improve deliberation and democratic processes. However, as deliberation should transform deliberators, technology might, even consciously or unintendedly, transform deliberative processes. This transformation of deliberative processes might have a twofold result: first, it might prevent deliberators from developing certain skills that directly contribute to epistemic and other properties of democratic deliberation; and second, and derivatively, it might ultimately impact the way in which public decisions are considered legitimate. This paper develops a systematic analysis of the epistemic erosion that certain applications of AI-based technologies might have on both deliberators and this political process. Finally, I argue that the use and implementation of AI-driven democratic innovations should not only rely on the potentialities and possibilities that the technology brings, but also on how it contributes to advance and improve the social, economic, and political model that we agreed to build.