Is AI Good for Democracy?
Source: Schneier on Security
The Global AI Arms Race
Politicians fixate on the global race for technological supremacy between the US and China, debating geopolitical implications of chip exports, model releases, and military applications of AI. While they anticipate AI tipping the scales in a superpower conflict, the most important arms race of the 21st century is already happening elsewhere, with AI as the weapon of choice across dozens of domains.
Academic journals are flooded with AI‑generated papers and are turning to AI to help review submissions. Brazil’s court system began using AI to triage cases, only to face an increasing volume of filings assisted by AI. Open‑source developers are overwhelmed with code contributions from bots. Newspapers, music, social media, education, investigative journalism, hiring, and procurement are all being disrupted by a massive expansion of AI use.
Each of these is an arms race: adversaries within a system iteratively seeking an edge against their competition by continuously expanding their use of a common technology. Beneficiaries are US mega‑corporations capturing wealth at an unprecedented rate. A substantial fraction of the global economy has reoriented around AI in just the past few years, and that trend is accelerating. In parallel, industry lobbying interests are quickly becoming the object, rather than the subject, of US government power.
AI and Democratic Governance
To understand these arms races, consider how AI is changing the relationship between democratic governments and citizens. Interactions that once occurred between people and elected representatives are now expanding to massive scale, with AIs taking roles that humans once filled.
In a notorious 2017 example, the US Federal Communications Commission opened a web‑based comment platform to gather public input on internet regulation. The platform was quickly flooded with millions of comments fraudulently orchestrated by broadband providers to oppose regulation. In response, a 19‑year‑old college student submitted millions of comments supporting the regulation. Both sides used software primitive by today’s AI standards.
Nearly a decade later, it is harder for citizens to tell when they are talking to a government bot or when an online conversation about public policy is simply bots talking to bots. When constituents leverage AI to communicate better, faster, and more often, it pressures government officials to do the same.
Current Landscape in the United States
- Congressional staff are using AI to make constituent email correspondence more efficient.
- Political campaigns adopt AI tools to automate fundraising and voter outreach.
- By a 2025 estimate, a fifth of public submissions to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were already generated with AI assistance.
People and organizations adopt AI because it solves a real problem: mass advocacy campaigns have historically been ineffective because quantity is inversely proportional to both quality and relevance. Government agencies can dismiss generic comments in favor of specific, actionable ones, making it hard for regular people to be heard. Most citizens lack the time to learn the specifics or express themselves in detail. AI simplifies contextualization and personalization, and as the volume and length of constituent comments grow, agencies turn to AI to facilitate review and response.
Implications and Risks
The arms race dynamic is evident:
- Submission side – Citizens and interest groups use AI to generate large numbers of comments.
- Reception side – Agencies employ AI to wade through the influx of submissions.
If one side gains a temporary advantage, it is likely short‑lived. However, real harm arises when one party exploits the other in these adversarial systems:
- Democratic erosion – Public servants may use AI‑generated responses to ignore or dismiss voices rather than to listen and include them.
- Scientific degradation – Fraudulent, sloppily generated papers can overwhelm legitimate research.
Opportunities and Resistance
Despite the dominance of a handful of American Big Tech corporations extracting trillions from AI chip manufacturing, data‑center operation, and frontier model development, people and governments retain substantial capability to fight back.
- Antitrust regulation aims to curb concentration of wealth and power.
- Human‑rights protections seek to safeguard democratic participation.
- Public alternatives to corporate AI provide community‑controlled tools.
Those concerned about the AI arms race and committed to preserving democratic interests should think in two complementary terms:
- Leverage the technology for personal and collective advantage.
- Resist concentration of power by promoting regulation, transparency, and public alternatives.
Conclusion
The AI arms race is inevitable in an adversarial system where every actor is incentivized to use new technologies to advance its own interests. Yet, even as AI is exploited against citizens, there are heartening examples of its use for empowerment. Ultimately, while corporate AI giants profit from the race dynamic, democracies can and must push back through policy, public innovation, and strategic adoption of AI tools.
This essay was written with Nathan E. Sanders and originally appeared in The Times of India.