Will AI save or ruin democracy? It depends on whether we allow computers to stand in for people

By Fenwick McKelvey, Professor in Information and Communication Technology Policy, Concordia University

We seem to be caught in a loop that AI will either save or ruin democracy.

At one extreme, politics scholar David Altman worries that artificial intelligence is leading the world toward an “AI-driven political system in which approval is manufactured, public debate is hollowed out and citizens have no meaningful voice.”

On the other hand, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his head of research, Andrew Sorota, dream that “we…

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