Augmenting Democracy Through AI Aligning? Going Beyond Hype and Technophobia

There is a massive hype—that occasionally turns into myopic paranoia—over developments in artificial intelligence. At the same time, however, the way we govern, and we are governed seems to be not on par with still accelerating pace of technological advancement. The above phenomena, however important and transformative, would not be that perplexing if only they were not related to a plethora of current formidable challenges for democracy. To put it in other words: this lack of adaptability of political world would not matter so much if only democracy was working properly. This widening discrepancy between technology opportunities and public’s frustration with democratic politics calls for consideration since it may constitute a basis for mapping out some viable options to reinvigorate democratic systems. Therefore, the main aim of this paper is to map the field by investigating some solutions using AI through the lenses of theory of democracy. Specifically, the following five dimensions are addressed: electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian. Within each of these categories, exemplary initiatives using the AI-enhanced tools are critically analysed to go beyond the dominant dystopian approach to the topic (Coeckelbergh, 2022, pp. 62–92). By this, the above research design contributes to other attempts aimed at mapping the debate on AI applications in political arrangements (de Sousa et al., 2019; Katzenbach & Ulbricht, 2019; Sætra, 2021). Based on the above, two conclusions are suggested. First, AI can be successfully applied in all dimensions of democracy, albeit with varying number of applications: participatory/deliberative area being a dominant one. And second, AI solutions seem not to be either good or bad; they are, rather, a set of (powerful) tools that are used by different actors for different goals. Here, a version of “St. Matthew’s effect” aptly describes AI applications across different regimes: these already democratic use it to become even more democratic, whereas these autocratic take advantage of AI to suppress their citizens more.