Will AI destroy democracy or be its savior?

Will AI destroy democracy or be its savior?In the bustling metropolis of Techville, where neon-lit skyscrapers and algorithm-driven traffic lights rule the streets, the latest buzz isn’t about the newest gadget or the trendiest AI companion. No, the citizens of Techville are grappling with a weightier issue — democracy and how AI might be its ruin or its savior.

The idea that AI could one day manage democracies has moved from science fiction to serious discourse in Techville’s coffee shops and university halls. Over a latte, the city’s philosophers debate whether AI could enhance the democratic process or if it’s a slippery slope toward technocratic tyranny.

The great expert on democracies, a figure whose name you’ll hear whispered with a mix of reverence and concern, once said: “Their worst enemy is the inequality between rich and poor.” It’s hard to imagine how a silicon-based overlord, devoid of human emotion, could tackle such a deeply human issue. Yet, here we are, asking: Could AI help resolve the growing chasm between the haves and the have-nots, or will it merely exacerbate it?

Let’s start with the concerns. Erica Benner, political philosopher and author of Adventures in Democracy, has much to say on the matter. “The dangers that threaten our political system are multifaceted,” she warns. And before you think she’s about to extol the virtues of a well-educated electorate, Benner throws us a curveball. “The solution,” she argues, “is not necessarily to have more educated citizens.”

Benner’s argument is both refreshing and unsettling. She suggests that the problem isn’t just the voters, but the very framework of democracy itself. In an AI-managed democracy, the risk isn’t just that the uneducated masses might be swayed by clever algorithms. The bigger issue is that AI could institutionalize biases, effectively cementing existing inequalities. In other words, the system that should be freeing us could end up shackling us in new ways.

Imagine an AI, designed to maximize efficiency and stability, which determines that the best way to run a country is by reinforcing the status quo. If the rich are happy, and the poor are pacified with just enough resources to keep them quiet, why change anything? The inequality that our democracy expert warned about could become a permanent feature — no longer a bug, but an intentional design choice.

There’s a certain allure to the idea of AI-driven governance. Algorithms, after all, aren’t susceptible to bribes, they don’t get tired, and they don’t have a stake in the next election cycle.

Rafael Hernandez de Santiago

But let’s not throw the AI out with the bathwater just yet. The optimists in Techville have a different vision. They see AI as the tool that could finally perfect democracy, eliminating corruption, inefficiency, and perhaps even the inequality that plagues our current systems. In a city where even the street sweepers discuss Kant over their morning coffee, the idea of an AI philosopher-king doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

There’s a certain allure to the idea of AI-driven governance. Algorithms, after all, aren’t susceptible to bribes, they don’t get tired, and they don’t have a stake in the next election cycle. “Imagine a world where policies are based purely on data,” muses one of Techville’s more starry-eyed tech entrepreneurs, “where decisions are made without the messy business of human emotions and biases.”

Yet, even the most sophisticated AI systems are only as good as the data they’re fed. And as any Techvillian worth their coding skills will tell you, data can be messy, biased, and incomplete. The irony here is rich. The very tools that promise to perfect democracy could end up corrupting it from within, not through malice or intent, but through the cold, unfeeling logic that AI thrives on.

Techville’s streets may be clean, and its governance hyper-efficient, but beneath the surface, the philosophical debate rages on. Can a democracy managed by AI truly be democratic? Or would it be democracy in name only, with the real power held by the engineers and data scientists behind the curtain?

There’s a delicious irony in the fact that the very tools we’ve created to serve us might end up ruling us instead. As Benner wryly notes in Adventures in Democracy: “Perhaps the greatest adventure of all is the one where we realize that the map we’ve been following leads us right back to where we started.”

In a city where irony is the local dialect and debate a civic duty, the discussion is far from over. Should we reinvent democracy to include our new AI overlords? Or should we be cautious, remembering that the tools we build to solve our problems often create new ones in their wake?

One thing is clear. Democracy, like any good piece of technology, might need a few updates. But whether those updates should be coded by humans or by AI is a question that even the smartest bots in Techville have yet to answer.

• Rafael Hernandez de Santiago, viscount of Espes, is a Spanish national residing in Saudi Arabia and working at the Gulf Research Center.