DemocracyNext Calls for Citizen Deliberation in AI Governance
Plus: Upcoming events in Mexico City, Washington D.C. and Boston
🤖 Artificial intelligence (AI) is all over the news lately — here’s our view:
Any new power must be met by the societal capacity to manage it responsibly. 'General Purpose AIs' (GPAIs) are advancing at exponential rates, raising political and social questions about what kind of society we want to live in, and who gets a say in shaping these futures.
The development of these GPAIs entails enormous potential for harm as well as societal benefit, with systemic impacts on many aspects of our everyday lives - from education to work, the economy, media and the information ecosystem, policing and justice, healthcare, and more – as well as impacts on the international security environment in an increasingly multipolar context.
The global challenges around governing AI reveal our existing institutions as unequal to the problems of our day. We believe it is imperative that these new technologies are shaped and deployed in alignment with human values and aspirations - determined not just by a narrow elite or the small pool of people who are creating the technology, but in an inclusive, democratic, and deliberative way.
At DemocracyNext, we’re exploring the potential for a new type of global institution that can shape the ongoing development, deployment, and regulation of AI technologies alongside the key societal choices they are likely to provoke.
Centered on processes like Citizens’ Assemblies, this institution would engage everyday people from all walks of life, representatively selected through democratic lotteries, and informed through deliberative processes that create good conditions for grappling with complexity and finding common ground. We see the potential for this new paradigm of democratic engagement to be brought to life in countries around the world, in assemblies at different scales, including a global deliberation.
We’re organizing a formative coalition with international colleagues across deliberative democracy, experts in AI & governance, media, organizers, and campaigners.
Please reach out if you’d like to join the conversation and contribute to this effort.
🌎 Some details about upcoming travels and events:
From May 3-11, Founding Head of Research and Learning Ieva Česnulaitytė and Communications Director Ansel Herz will be in 🇲🇽 Mexico City for a workshop hosted by PeoplePowered as well as the launch of INE’s official Spanish translation of the OECD report “Catching the Deliberative Wave.” Register for the May 8 event with INE here.
Meanwhile, Founder/CEO Claudia Chwalisz is visiting 🇺🇸 Washington DC May 1-8 for events with the RAND Institute, Bertelsmann Foundation and others, followed by a visit to Boston May 10-17 for events with MIT and Harvard about the future of democracy and exploring the potential of Citizens’ Assemblies for Boston and Cambridge with our U.S. Lead Rahmin Sarabi.
As always, if you’d like to connect, please email us at hello@demnext.org!
Finally, a few recent articles that may be of interest:
How Deliberation Happens: Enabling Deliberative Reason in the American Political Science Review by Simon Niemeyer, Francesco Veri, John S. Dryzek, and André Bächtiger — In this paper, the authors present a new methodology for assessing a deliberative process that measures the degree to which citizens reason together to understand the quality of outcomes of deliberative forums. They call this Deliberative Reason index. Using this measurement, they address one of the most common skeptical notions surrounding deliberative democracy - whether randomly selected people can be trusted to grapple with the challenging and sometimes controversial topics addressed in a citizens’ assembly. They argue that yes, citizens can be trusted, because ’’the ability to deliberate is not a matter of capacity, it’s a matter of creating the right conditions.’
Hilary Sutcliffe of the Carnegie Council interviews Claudia Chwalisz — listen here or watch below:
Our strategic advisor Hélène Landemore reflects on the success of the French Citizens’ Assembly on End of Life in Le Monde (English here.)
Coming next week: an interview with our board member, BIOSS International Chief Executive and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy producer Robbie Stamp! Stay tuned.