AI-enhanced nudging in public policy: why to worry and how to respond

Abstract What role can artificial intelligence (AI) play in enhancing public policy nudges and the extent to which these help people achieve their own goals? Can it help mitigate or even overcome the challenges that nudgers face in this respect? This paper discusses how AI-enhanced personalization can help make nudges more means paternalistic and thus more respectful of people’s ends. We explore the potential added value of AI by analyzing to what extent it can, (1) help identify individual preferences and (2) tailor different nudging techniques to different people based on variations in their susceptibility to those techniques. However, we also argue that the successes booked in this respect in the for-profit sector cannot simply be replicated in public policy. While AI can bring benefits to means paternalist public policy nudging, it also has predictable downsides (lower effectiveness compared to the private sector) and risks (graver consequences compared to the private sector). We discuss the practical implications of all this and propose novel strategies that both consumers and regulators can employ to respond to private AI use in nudging with the aim of safeguarding people’s autonomy and agency.