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 DemocracyNext webinar, we launch Deliberative Muscles and AI, a new paper by Claudia Chwalisz, Sammy McKinney, Jorim Theuns, and Eugene Yi.
In this paper, we 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
Claudia has been working on democratic innovation for over a decade, initially sparked by her research on populism and the extent to which it is driven by people’s disillusionment with the political system and with a lack of agency to shape the decisions affecting their lives. Claudia was involved in designing the world’s first permanent Citizens’ Assemblies in Paris, Ostbelgien, and Brussels. Claudia established and led the OECD’s work on innovative citizen participation from 2018-2022, creating the Deliberative Democracy Toolbox, which includes a public database of over 700 examples of Citizens’ Assemblies, the flagship report Catching the Deliberative Wave (2020), standards for implementation (2020), and guidelines for evaluation and institutionalisation of deliberative assemblies (2021), as well guidelines for citizen participation processes (2022). Claudia founded DemocracyNext in 2022.
Sammy McKinney, Author, AI & Deliberation Fellow, DemocracyNext, and PhD Candidate at University of Cambridge
Sammy is a PhD student in Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. His PhD research critically explores the integration of artificial intelligence into processes of public deliberation, especially citizens’ assemblies. This research expands on his master's thesis carried out at the University of Edinburgh, which he published in an adapted form in the Journal of Deliberative Democracy. Beyond academia, Sammy has facilitated AI governance courses for BlueDot Impact, co-developed ethical guidelines for AI in public deliberation with deliberAIde, and planned tech-enhanced conservation projects with partners from across the globe through Rainforest Connection.
Jorim Theuns, Author, Co-Founder, Dembrane
Jorim is the CEO and co-founder of Dembrane, a civic tech initiative dedicated to transforming how democratic participation works in everyday life. At the heart of Dembrane’s work is the belief that democracy should be more than a political event every few years, it should be part of how we govern our cities, design public services, and make collective decisions.
Eugene Yi, Author, Impact Research Fellow, DemocracyNext
Eugene Yi is an experienced tech entrepreneur, product and media executive, and policy expert. Previously, he co-founded Cortico to help build tech-enhanced deliberative systems for our democracy. His experiences range from leading Asia policy at Twitter from 2012 to 2016 and was previously the Head of Product at Hawkfish, a digital technology and data firm founded by Mike Bloomberg. He served in the U.S. Department of Defense and was a U.S. diplomat early in his career. He received his AB and MPA from Princeton University, and is a Visiting Researcher at MIT and a PhD candidate at Oxford University.
Lisa Gutermuth, Senior Program Officer, Mozilla Foundation
Lisa is a program officer at Mozilla's Data Futures Lab, where her work focuses on creating a more equitable data economy. She has a master's degree in Agricultural Economics from Humboldt University in Berlin. She was also a visiting researcher at the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, in Berlin, and served on the jury of the German Prototype Fund from 2019-2021. Prior to working with Mozilla, Lisa was a senior program manager at Ranking Digital Rights, and a project coordinator with Tactical Technology Collective, where she focused on digital security, women's rights, and sustainability projects.
Mauricio Mejia, Policy Analyst, OECD
Mauricio advocates for democracy, digital rights and citizen participation. He follows international politics as a passion with a specific interest in Mexican and LATAM politics. Mauricio helps governments, civil society, and international organizations strengthen democracy through citizen participation, open government, and digital innovation. His work spans consulting, research, and capacity-building, as well as publishing and speaking on democracy and global affairs.
Moderated by:
Andrew Sorota, Head of Research for the Office of Eric Schmidt
Andrew has worked on the teams of Eric Schmidt and Fareed Zakaria since graduating from Yale with a BA in Political Science and Philosophy in 2022. His main research interests are populism and democratic innovations. He wrote “Why picking citizens at random could be the best way to govern the A.I. revolution” for Fortune Magazine with Helene Landemore and Audrey Tang.
This webinar will be recorded and shared after the session via our YouTube channel.