Rethinking democracy in the “pandemic society” a journey in search of the governance with, of and by AI
Gianluca Carlo Misuraca · 2020
The COVID-19 outbreak had a swift and severe impact on our lives, and a subtle transformation is affecting Democracy as we are used to knowing it In this paper I argue that the “Pandemic Society” we are now experiencing magnifies a dilemma already evident in the recent evolution of digital government and governance: securing citizens' privacy or delivering better services - now including the protection of personal health In this scenario, while human interactions are being permanently modified by the mediation of technologies, and in particular the accelerated adoption of Artificial Intelligence, a fundamental question to be addressed is how to ensure digital resilience and collective well-being while safeguarding liberal democracy and individual rights Finding an answer to this challenge requires innovating the democratic settings and functioning of global governance arrangements in the digital age Yet too little is known about the chances and the conditions for AI to become supportive of the needed quantity and quality of democratic innovation in the forthcoming decades I thus elaborate on the quest for redesigning institutional frameworks to rethink and innovate our democratic systems and instruments for deliberation, where the AI phenomenon - under wide scrutiny now also at policy and public service levels - becomes crucial I conclude suggesting directions for further research and new avenues for policy design and governance in the age of digital transformation Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4 0 International (CC BY 4 0)