Deliberative muscles and AI
Democracy is under strain. Polarisation is hardening, trust in institutions is eroding, and global challenges are outpacing the capacity of our political systems to respond.
In this webinar, DemocracyNext launches Deliberative Muscles and AI, a new paper by Claudia Chwalisz, Sammy McKinney, Jorim Theuns, and Eugene Yi.
In this paper, the authors argue that, designed with care and intentionality, AI can play a powerful role in strengthening the goals of deliberation. The catch is that the very efficiencies that make AI attractive can undermine those goals in the first place if we are not deliberate about how we use them. Whether AI weakens deliberation or strengthens it is a matter of design, not destiny.
The authors argue that deliberative assemblies are not just decision making machines whose sole value lies in the quality of the recommendation. They are spaces in which participants exercise and develop the civic capacities that democracy depends upon. The authors call these deliberative muscles - and a muscle weakens when it isn't used.
The paper maps seven of them: self-reflection, reasoning, dialogue, vulnerability, collaboration, imagination, and facilitation. For each, they explore where AI integration risks substituting for the muscle, and where it may be able to strengthen it. The key design question is: "does this technology leave people more or less capable of deliberating well?"
What to expect:
- Why deliberative assemblies are sites where we exercise and strengthen the capacities that democratic life requires
- The seven deliberative muscles and how technology can help or hinder each
- The distinction between complementary and competitive AI uses in deliberative practice
- What this means for practitioners deciding how to integrate AI, technologists deciding what to build, and funders deciding what to back.
This paper is for people with the authority and responsibility of deciding how technology is going to be deployed in a deliberative process - commissioning authorities in government and other organisations, as well as democracy practitioners, designers, and facilitators. We are also writing for technologists deciding what to build, for funders deciding what to back, and for scholars mapping a fast-moving field.
Speakers:
- Claudia Chwalisz, Author, Founder and CEO, DemocracyNext
- Sammy McKinney, Author, AI & Deliberation Fellow, DemocracyNext, and PhD Candidate at University of Cambridge
- Jorim Theuns, Author, Co-Founder, Dembrane
- Eugene Yi, Author, Impact Research Fellow, DemocracyNext
- Lisa Gutermuth, Senior Program Officer, Mozilla Foundation
- Mauricio Mejia, Policy Analyst, OECD
Moderated by: Andrew Sorota, Head of Research for the Office of Eric Schmidt
This webinar will be recorded and shared after the session via the DemocracyNext YouTube channel.