Civic slop

Due to the increasing amount of AI slop encroaching on our democratic processes, we’re going to need to start adapting them. Even well-intended participation platforms are already inviting participants to submit AI-generated ideas, proposals, and personal stories to participatory democracy channels. There are benefits to this — the barrier to digital participation has been lowered, and people can get assistance in telling their story or developing their idea. But then there’s the bad actors. They’re using AI to intentionally pollute existing participation channels, which I fear will quickly erode the political legitimacy of those channels, in truth and/or decision-makers’ perception. In cybersecurity, we ‘harden’ soft attack vectors where opponents might be able to break into our systems. Participatory democracy needs to do the same. This may look like verifying participants’ constituency status, while still allowing anonymous participation when appropriate. Or proving personhood for submissions. Or other approaches. But there’s a whole heap of work to do there. Just as the entire education system is struggling to adapt to the AI era, we need to do the same.