What is the best framework for the global governance of AI? How do we respond to tech companies who argue against regulation? Is our current pace of technological change ultimately greater than our ability to manage it?

These are some of the pressing questions my team and I grapple with at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy. 

In my recent paper, Can Democracy Survive AI, published on the heels of the UK’s AI Opportunities Action Plan, I explain the fundamental challenges that AI poses to democracies.

In some ways, AI can be seen as inherently anti-democratic. As it exists now, AI innovation is accelerating centralisation and control, fuelling ideologies of trade-offs between regulation and economic growth, prioritising efficiency over accountability, and enabling absolute control coupled with unaccountable power. The story about AI that people are currently telling is one about economic growth and how technology will work for us. However, there are many other possible futures that help us frame these potentially transformative technologies, for example as supporting artists and creators, rather than threatening their livelihoods. 

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