Artificial Intelligence and democracy: A Delphi Study Into Opportunities and Threats

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) penetrates all sectors of society, academic attention to its relationship with democracy is rapidly increasing, leading to a growing body of literature. Optimists expect AI to strengthen democracy, while pessimists argue that it may undermine its essential features. Yet, the analysis of the relation between AI and democracy often remains fuzzy, fragmented, and focused on a narrow range of topics. Therefore, this study aims to provide a systematic understanding of the AI–democracy interplay. A basic framework with four dimensions of democracy – comprising four Ps: Polity, Politics, Policy, and Polis – is introduced to structure expert opinions about the potential opportunities and threats that AI poses for democracy over the next five to ten years. Thirty experts contributed to a Delphi survey, and the analysis shows that the 4Ps framework offers a valuable way to organize the AI–democracy debate, allowing for nuance and less obvious aspects. While, similar to the literature, experts generally identified more threats than opportunities, the survey identifies various opportunities to strengthen democracy that quite absent in debates. In addition, the Delphi survey brings to the fore a fifth P – Performance – which involves a general addition to the basic framework – and emphasizes the (in)ability of the democratic system to solve citizens’ problems and to generate desirable results. As such, this article provides both an empirical diagnosis of the relation between AI and democracy, and a potential agenda for further actions to preserve and strengthen democracy. This article contributes to the literature in three ways: by offering a novel framework to structure the fuzzy AI–democracy debate across its different dimensions; by surfacing less obvious and underexplored aspects of this interaction through a Delphi expert survey; and by moving beyond a predominantly risk-focused perspective in AI governance to also consider an array of opportunities AI adoption may create for democracy.