KE event: “AI and democracy” Event
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- 2025-03-06 16:09:00
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Event details
On 6th March, Centre of Democratic Futures hosted its first KE event on AI and democracy.?We had the pleasure to welcome two speakers – Dr Simon Wallace and Dr Nick Almond – from two leading companies – Suffrago and FactoryDAO – to join researchers in 天发娱乐棋牌_天发娱乐APP-官网|下载 to engage with the key debate: whether AI can (ever) do any good to democracy? If so, how? And with what impacts? Indeed, considering the prevalence of public fear and anti-democratic narratives surrounding AI, it is difficult for many to even think about AI making any improvement in democracy. But as the event unfolded, it was clear that AI affords possibilities – along with new challenges – for reimagining and reinventing democracy that are not otherwise possible.
Despite the major train disruption in the morning that led to some reshuffling of the agenda, Rafael Mestre – one of the CDF directors – kicked off the event with an introduction of the CDF to the audience and speakers. Following this, speakers, with their 'real-world' experiences, unpacked the relationship between AI and democracy from their research expertise or industrial experiences: from designing an AI city to civic AI systems, from Blockchain issue-based voting to AI-enabled consensus-finding for parliamentary bills. Different dimensions of democracy have been explored in relation to AI: security, trust, design, ethics and civic participation. What emerged from their talks (and great questions being asked by the audience) is that this debate should be engaged with from a more realistic perspective that understands what AI can do from how it is imagined, designed and used (differently) by civic societies. Challenges about AI ethics and safety issues should be taken seriously into account; but they should not be used as an excuse to foreclose their potential for democracy. The bottom line is that citizens should have a right to shape the development of AI technologies in societies in ways that make their voices heard and that make a difference to their lives.
On reflection, this event truly embraced the spirit of knowledge exchange, in that both internal and external speakers candidly shared what they understood about the challenges and opportunities when it comes to AI and democracy. It was great to see what a good quality of knowledge exchange can bring to parties involved: people sharing their aspirations and experiments democratically – with a sense of frankness and liberation – and some fun, too.
Special thanks to Dr Richard Gomer , Mbang Young, Professor Sebastian Stein for their brilliant lightning talks and good questions from the audience. Last but not least, the unwavering support from CDF's directors: Claire Clarkin , Rikki Dean , Rafael Mestre , Bindi Shah and Zohreh Khoban .
More photos and 'live tracks' of the event: please find them in CDF's BlueSky account .