Essays in the Category "Democracy"
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Is AI Good for Democracy?
Politicians fixate on the global race for technological supremacy between US and China. They debate geopolitical implications of chip exports, latest model releases from each country, and military applications of AI. Someday, they believe, we might see advancements in AI tip the scales in a superpower conflict.
But the most important arms race of the 21st century is already happening elsewhere and, while AI is definitely the weapon of choice, combatants are distributed across dozens of domains.
Academic journals are flooded with AI-generated papers, and are turning to AI to help review submissions. Brazil’s …
Rewiring Democracy Now
A new kind of political engagement emerges in Japan
This is the first in a new multi-part series by Sanders and Schneier going into depth on real-world examples of democratic technologies from their book, Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship.
When we first heard the name Takahiro Anno a year ago, the then 33-year-old had just mounted a longshot bid for governor of Tokyo. He lacked the backing of any established political party, but won more than 150,000 votes.
That’s not an easy feat for a political newcomer with essentially no resources—no funding for advertising, no campaign apparatus, no political organization. Anno adopted a strategy that differentiated him among the candidates…
Are We Ready to Be Governed by Artificial Intelligence?
Experts Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders explore how Artificial Intelligence is already shaping the executive, judicial, and legislative branches, showing that we are already, at least in part, governed by AI—with more likely to come.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) overlords are a common trope in science-fiction dystopias, but the reality looks much more prosaic. The technologies of artificial intelligence are already pervading many aspects of democratic government, affecting our lives in ways both large and small. This has occurred largely without our notice or consent. The result is a government incrementally transformed by AI rather than the singular technological overlord of the big screen.
Let us begin with the executive branch. One of the most important functions of this branch of government is to administer the law, including the human services on which so many Americans rely. Many of these programs have long been operated by a mix of humans and machines, even if not previously using modern AI tools such as …
Four Ways AI Is Being Used to Strengthen Democracies Worldwide
Democracy is colliding with the technologies of artificial intelligence. Judging from the audience reaction at the recent World Forum on Democracy in Strasbourg, the general expectation is that democracy will be the worse for it. We have another narrative. Yes, there are risks to democracy from AI, but there are also opportunities.
We have just published the book Rewiring Democracy: How AI will Transform Politics, Government, and Citizenship. In it, we take a clear-eyed view of how AI is undermining confidence in our information ecosystem, how the use of biased AI can harm constituents of democracies and how elected officials with authoritarian tendencies can use it to consolidate power. But we also give positive examples of how AI is transforming democratic governance and politics for the better…
Who Will Be the First American Candidate to Harness AI?
Social media has been a familiar, even mundane, part of life for nearly two decades. It can be easy to forget it was not always that way.
In 2008, social media was just emerging into the mainstream. Facebook reached 100 million users that summer. And a singular candidate was integrating social media into his political campaign: Barack Obama. His campaign’s use of social media was so bracingly innovative, so impactful, that it was viewed by journalist David Talbot and others as the strategy that enabled the first term Senator to win the White House…
AI Is Changing How Politics Is Practiced in America
Here’s what to expect in the midterm elections.
Two years ago, Americans anxious about the forthcoming 2024 presidential election were considering the malevolent force of an election influencer: artificial intelligence. Over the past several years, we have seen plenty of warning signs from elections worldwide demonstrating how AI can be used to propagate misinformation and alter the political landscape, whether by trolls on social media, foreign influencers, or even a street magician. AI is poised to play a more volatile role than ever before in America’s next federal election in 2026. We can already see how different groups of political actors are approaching AI. Professional campaigners are using AI to accelerate the traditional tactics of electioneering; organizers are using it to reinvent how movements are built; and citizens are using it both to express themselves and amplify their side’s messaging. Because there are so few rules, and so little prospect of regulatory action, around AI’s role in politics, there is no oversight of these activities, and no safeguards against the dramatic potential impacts for our democracy…
How AI Could Drive the 2026 Midterm Elections
We are nearly one year out from the 2026 midterm elections, and it’s far too early to predict the outcomes. But it’s a safe bet that artificial intelligence technologies will once again be a major storyline.
The widespread fear that AI would be used to manipulate the 2024 U.S. election seems rather quaint in a year where the president posts AI-generated images of himself as the pope on official White House accounts. But AI is a lot more than an information manipulator. It’s also emerging as a politicized issue. Political first-movers are adopting the technology, and that’s opening a …
DOGE’s Flops Shouldn’t Spell Doom for AI in Government
Just a few months after Elon Musk’s retreat from his unofficial role leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), we have a clearer picture of his vision of government powered by artificial intelligence, and it has a lot more to do with consolidating power than benefitting the public. Even so, we must not lose sight of the fact that a different administration could wield the same technology to advance a more positive future for AI in government.
To most on the American left, the DOGE end game is a dystopic vision of a government run by machines that benefits an elite few at the expense of the people. It includes AI …
Cyberattacks Shake Voters’ Trust in Elections, Regardless of Party
This essay also appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Governing.
American democracy runs on trust, and that trust is cracking.
Nearly half of Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, question whether elections are conducted fairly. Some voters accept election results only when their side wins. The problem isn’t just political polarization—it’s a creeping erosion of trust in the machinery of democracy itself.
Commentators blame ideological tribalism, misinformation campaigns and partisan echo chambers for this crisis of trust. But these explanations miss a critical piece of the puzzle: a growing unease with the digital infrastructure that now underpins nearly every aspect of how Americans vote…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.