A brief braindump prompted by hearing talk of an AI minister. Better argued thoughts might follow later.
Thinking about “AI ministers” (as in, ministers who are AIs, not ministers for AIs) and citizen assemblies and increasingly convinced that a lot of democracy innovation at the moment is forgetting the perspective of any-given-citizen.
Not the theoretical citizen, averaged out across a thousand assemblies, but without real power in any of them, and with no choice about the issues he or she is asked to deliberate upon.
Not the citizen as policy consumer who can be as well served by a digital minister as by a human one.
But any-given-citizen, a real person who has a certain vision of the world, a certain set of things she or he is annoyed about, and wants to be able to do something – to have some agency.
They have a vote, which we can make more effective. They have a voice, which we can make more powerful. They are a customer of government, which we can make more responsive and more open.
But alongside those already huge challenges, we have to recreate the connection that they used to have through mass parties, unions or churches, from the life that they are living to the decision making level of politics.
I once thought that social media and digital platforms could be that route. I don’t think that any more – or at least, not ones that look like the places where people live online today.
But we need to empower any-given-citizen, not the theoretical citizen. We have to empower them across whatever issues they care about. And when they express themselves we have to have humans listening to humans taking decisions about humans.