Why AI Technosolutionism Harms Democracy and Deliberation
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.Technology has recently entered the scene of deliberative democracy, both as a subject of deliberation and as a way to improve deliberative processes. The hegemonic position in this debate appears to be that, while it is not a bulletproof solution, technology holds the potential to make deliberative democracy better. The article takes stock of the latest developments in citizen assemblies in relation to technology, focusing specifically on the European Citizens’ Panels and Google’s Habermas Machine. Technosolutionism applied to deliberation assumes that the inherent problem with minipublics is simply that their nature hinders their scalability, ignoring other structural limitations regarding their internal logic. We argue that introducing technology as a ‘solution’ to ‘fix’ some of the ‘problems’ within the deliberative democracy community reinforces the depoliticisation and disintermediation of deliberative exercises. By contrast, deliberative democracy needs to be oriented towards mass politics and collective actors rather than reproducing the narrow conception of democracy upon which minipublics are built.
DOI: 10.16997/jdd.1839
Authors: Alvaro Oleart, Nicolás Palomo
Institution: Université Libre de Bruxelles
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4414244120