Aug 13, 2023 09:00:00

How can AI be used to improve democracy?

AI can now generate high-precision sentences in an overwhelmingly shorter time than humans, so ``

Public comments generated by AI may affect politics'' and ``Fake news made by AI There are concerns that it will spread and distort democracy.' Meanwhile, Bruce Schneier , a prominent information security expert and public policy lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School , argued that ``AI can strengthen democracy.''

AI could shore up democracy – here's one way
https://theconversation.com/ai-could-shore-up-democracy-heres-one-way-207278

Mr. Schneier said that many concerns have been raised so far that AI will have a huge negative impact on democracy and politics, and people are worried that 'AI is dangerous for political use.' I admit that I can't help it.

He argued that AI could be used constructively to better scale democracy in the face of population growth and increased social interconnection. He cites 'discussion moderation and consensus gathering' as a powerful use case.

One of the main ways citizens participate in politics is by sending public comments on public policies and rulemaking to public institutions. Over the years, government agencies have manually read the comments they receive, summarizing the opinions of millions of people and formulating responses. Of course, this process takes a lot of time and effort, and it's not always possible to read all the comments or absorb the important opinions.

So, in 2021, the United States Federal Council of Chief Data Officers

recommended implementing natural language processing tools to streamline the comment review process across government. At the time of writing the article, AI technology has progressed significantly since 2021, and a huge number of comments are classified based on semantic similarity. It is possible to summarize it so that it is easy for the person in charge to understand.

Using AI to summarize the vast amount of comments received from citizens into human-readable volumes is a huge boon to small public agencies and legislative officials who don't have that much manpower or time to spare. Brings

While comment summarization by AI has advantages in terms of time and cost, in the process it omits details such as ``the unique personalities and relationships that individual citizens have'', so many people are reviewers. It is easy to overlook the “personal experience” that makes people share a common point of view. As a result, we risk missing out on compelling arguments and episodes on the topic and missing out on opportunities to recognize 'dedicated and knowledgeable advocates with whom we can build long-term and productive relationships.' Schneier points out.

AI-assisted review processes certainly have some problems, such as those mentioned above. But Schneier said, 'In terms of practicality, a sort of summary approach strikes a good balance, because passionate letters are worth nothing if regulators and legislators can't take the time to read them in the first place.' He said that the use of AI would be more beneficial overall.

In addition, AI can extract ``unique and noteworthy opinions'', as opposed to finding common points from a huge number of comments and summarizing them. Politicians sometimes find a characteristic and highly persuasive episode from among the vast number of episodes submitted by citizens, and repeatedly tell the same episode at public hearings and campaigns to appeal to the audience. Using AI to extract these useful comments preserves the potential impact of individual public comments.

Mr. Schneier argued that talented, knowledgeable and enthusiastic citizens are able to articulate their personal experiences and distinctive perspectives. “An effective comment summarization process takes such unique perspectives out of the mountains and into the hands of lawmakers,” he said.