ArticlePublisher preview available

Artificial Intelligence’s Role in Community Engagement within the Democratic Process

DOI:10.1007/s42413-020-00100-8
Authors:
Marek Havrda at European Commission
Marek Havrda
Read publisher preview
Download citation
To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly from the author.

Abstract

This invited essay to the special issue, Intersections of Artificial Intelligence and Community Well-being, discusses the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for community decision-making with the aim to improve public debate leading to better outcomes in terms of community well-being. This AI-supported approach would also allow for greater citizen participation in community decision-making regarding the main decisions impacting well-being of communities by making fact-based public debate more accessible to the lay public.
  • A preview of this full-text is provided by Springer Nature.
  • Learn more
Preview content only
Content available from International Journal of Community Well-Being
This content is subject to copyright. Terms and conditions apply.
INVITED ESSAY
Accepted: 22 October 2020 /Published online: 18 November 2020
#Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
International Journal of Community Well-Being (2020) 3:437–441
https://doi.org/10.1007/s42413-020-00100-8
*Marek Havrda
marek.havrda@goodai.com
1
GoodAI, Prague, Czech Republic
Artificial Intelligence’s Role in Community
Engagement within the Democratic Process
Marek Havrda
1
Abstract
This invited essay to the special issue, Intersections of Artificial Intelligence and
Community Well-being, discusses the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for
community decision-making with the aim to improve public debate leading to better
outcomes in terms of community well-being. This AI-supported approach would also
allow for greater citizen participation in community decision-making regarding the
main decisions impacting well-being of communities by making fact-based public
debate more accessible to the lay public.
Keywords Artificial intelligence .Well-being .Community well-being .Citizens’
assemblies .Community engagement .Public deliberation
Today, communities and their political leaders have previously unimaginable access to
data, science-based facts, and scientific advice, as well as to insights generated by
decades of research into community well-being. However, communities and those who
represent communities make decisions that rarely take sufficient account of data, facts,
advice, and insights. Moreover, political leaders of communities often make decisions
that are not preceded by community engagement and well-informed public debate
about the future implications on a community’s well-being. There is immense potential
in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help remedy the situation. To date the positive
contribution of AI in the public sector has been rather limited despite its transformative
potential (Misuraca and van Noordt 2020;Reisetal.2019;Engstrometal.2020). For
example, in the European Union, most of the AI used in the public sector is aimed to
improve the performance of public services (Misuraca and van Noordt 2020). Although
there is ongoing experimentation with the deployment of AI in many federal agencies
in the United States and elsewhere, a lot of effort is needed to take advantage of AI
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
... Some of the claims made in favour of robogov are that it would be less hampered than human leaders by ideological extremism, tunnel vision, egotism and narcissistic tendencies. Therefore, robogov would also be less irrational, better able to capture real world complexity and more predictable [61,62,63]. However, this vision is not yet feasible because there remain many uncertainties regarding both the physical world as well as human behaviour. ...
... However, this vision is not yet feasible because there remain many uncertainties regarding both the physical world as well as human behaviour. As Havrda also rightly points out, it is also not desirable because these uncertainties should not be dealt with by automated decisions, but need to be the subject to human decision-making, and in democratic societies subject to public debate [61]. ...
... Launch pilot projects to test a more systematic use of AI systems for ex-ante policy impact assessments and ex-post evaluations. Under this framework, an experiment should also be carried out in close cooperation with video game developers to develop tools that would translate dry technical descriptions of the potential impacts of policy options and provide visual experiences of these impacts on countries, regions and communities to policymakers as well as to citizens in order to facilitate debate and decision-making [61]. ...
A report Humans and Societies in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Getting in touch with the EU
Book
Full-text available
  • Apr 2021
Artificial Intelligence (AI) will radically change our lives and transform our societies. This shift, which has already started, will most probably be the deepest and the fastest humanity has ever experienced. While most of the ongoing discussions on AI limit themselves to the short and medium-term effects, this short and comprehensive report tries to go beyond the most immediate challenges and to explore also some of the longer-term impacts that AI may have on humans and societies. It summarizes the key issues in 10 takeaways and suggests a list of possible actions to be taken by policymakers.
View
... One of the most impressive is the Common Ground for Action software now promoted by the nonprofit Every Voice Engaged, originally developed through a partnership of the Kettering Foundation and Conteneo (Christelle et al., 2018). Likewise, recent years have seen rapid-if inconsistent-advances that bridge civic engagement with automated facilitation (Fishkin et al., 2018;Wyss & Beste, 2017) and artificial intelligence (Havrda, 2020). Thus, the following design concepts assume the existing levels of technology being available, as well as the prospect for advanced features becoming more refined in the near future. ...
To Play Is the Thing: How Game Design Principles Can Make Online Deliberation Compelling
Article
Full-text available
This essay draws from game design to improve the prospects of democratic deliberation during government consultation with the public. The argument begins by reviewing the problem of low-quality deliberation in contemporary discourse, then explains how games can motivate participants to engage in demanding behaviors, such as deliberation. Key design features include: the origin, governance, and oversight of the game; the networked small groups at the center of the game; the objectives of these groups; the purpose of artificial intelligence and automated metrics for measuring deliberation; the roles played by public officials and nongovernmental organizations during the game; and the long-term payoff of playing the game for both its convenors and its participants. The essay concludes by considering this project’s wider theoretical significance for deliberative democracy, the first steps for governments and nonprofit organizations adopting this design, and the hazards of using advanced digital technology.
View
Predicting community attitudes towards alternative virus-management plans
Article
  • May 2021
In mid 2020 people vigorously debated which Corona virus-management strategy should be implemented – ‘total Lockdown’, ‘Partial Lockdown’ or ‘do Nothing’. For success, the chosen strategy would need considerable public support. So here we demonstrate how support, or otherwise, could have been predicted using our freely available Planticipate app. It self improves by sending its users' judgements to the cloud, where learning routines formulate regression- and neural network-based relationships between thirteen, key, plan-evaluation criteria and overall plan desirability. Hence whenever any set of plans are scored on the criteria, these relationships generate forecasts of plan desirability according to a number of demographic groups of past users. Our app predicted that many community groups will regard the ‘do-Nothing’ option as statistically significantly inferior to the other two plans, and it also made several less-than-statistically-significant forecasts which were extremely thought provoking. Using innovative face charts to better interpret complicated, thirteen-dimensional data, Planticipate also suggested probable reasons for such forecasts. These included an apparent fixation upon only permissiveness and productivity by people living in North America and relative pragmatism amongst females. Such revelations immediately suggested possible modifications for making different plans more acceptable to certain community groups. Given that in reality several of these modifications were only implemented later on during the pandemic, an early application of our app would almost certainly have prompted faster, more creative and more empathetic urban management.
View
View
View
Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly on Climate Change: Lessons for Deliberative Public Engagement and Communication
Article
Citizens’ assemblies can contribute to inclusive, citizen-driven policymaking. This commentary focuses on Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly, an internationally acclaimed deliberative forum that examined pressing social, environmental and political issues facing the country, including climate change. Citizens’ assemblies bring together randomly selected, representative samples of the population and task them with deliberating on public policy questions. They have been posited as a solution to complex public policy challenges, and form a key demand of the environmental activist organisation Extinction Rebellion to tackle the perceived inability of the political system to adequately address the climate crisis. We discuss key strengths of Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly experience that could be replicated elsewhere, along with teasing out some limitations of the process. We suggest how the communication of citizens’ assemblies could be improved, including in relation to their recruitment methodologies, use of witnesses and citizen feedback processes. In doing so, we provide lessons for others wishing to enact similar deliberative processes across topic areas.
View
Towards an understanding of artificial intelligence in government
Conference Paper
  • May 2018
The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize Artificial Intelligence and applications used by the government through a meta-analysis to identify definitions, techniques, and applications for government. We found that Artificial Intelligence is useful for the decision-making process, cost reduction, changes in the environment, biomedics, disaster prevention and response, education, and personalize services among other applications.
View
An Inconvenient Truth
  • D Guggenheim
Guggenheim, D. (2006). An Inconvenient Truth [DVD]. United States: Lawrence Bender Productions & Participant Productions.
Overview of the use and impact of AI in public services in the EU. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union
  • G Misuraca
  • C Van Noordt
Misuraca, G., & van Noordt, C. (2020). Overview of the use and impact of AI in public services in the EU. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union Retrieved from https://publications.jrc.ec. europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC120399/jrc120399_misuraca-ai-watch_public-services_30062020_ def.pdf.
The happiness policy handbook, how to make happiness and well-being the purpose of your government
  • L Musikanski
  • R Phillips
  • J Crowder
Musikanski, L., Phillips, R., & Crowder, J. (2019). The happiness policy handbook, how to make happiness and well-being the purpose of your government. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers.
OECD AI Policy Observatory Portal
  • Oecd
OECD. (2020). OECD AI Policy Observatory Portal. Retrieved 12 October 2020, from https://oecd.ai/policyareas.
Impacts of artificial intelligence on public administration: a systematic literature review
  • J Reis
  • P Espírito Santo
  • N Melão
Reis, J., Espírito Santo, P., & Melão, N. (2019). Impacts of artificial intelligence on public administration: a systematic literature review. In 14Th Iberian Conference On Information Systems And Technologies (CISTI). Retrieved from https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/226770041.pdf. The Economist. (2020). Citizens' assemblies are increasingly popular. Retrieved 12 October 2020, from https://www.economist.com/international/2020/09/19/citizens-assemblies-are-increasingly-popular.
Retrieved from <https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC120399/jrc120399_misuraca-ai-watch_public-services_30062020_def.pdf>
  • Jan 2020
  • G Misuraca
  • C van Noordt