Artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technologies transform policy-making. Governments increasingly adopt artificial intelligence algorithms in high-stakes public domains, ranging from predictive policing to the automation of the welfare state. We expect reliance on algorithmic technologies, and the societal relevance thereof, only to rise, with consequential impacts for citizens and public institutions alike.
Our mission
Our mission is to contribute to fostering an enhanced academic and public understanding of AI and digital governance issues. This includes public organisations’ need to be demanding and discerning users and consumers of AI and digital technologies, by understanding both the opportunities and the challenges these technologies bring when it comes to citizen-state interactions and citizens’ experience of government as well as their broader implications for the very nature of government and democracy.
Our research
The focus of our research interests is on the interaction between public values and AI and digital technology. We look both at the values that are to be secured in the collective steering of the use of AI and digital technology (core values like democracy, accountability, and transparency) and at the values involved in the social effects that the (public) use of AI produces, think of (in-)equality and inclusion.
Concretely, the AIDG lab researches pressing themes like
- the use of AI by government and public bodies, including the far-reaching implications of these developments for citizens,
- the impact of digital technologies on processes of collective will-formation and elections, and
- the transnational dynamics of the (global) regulation of AI and digital technologies.
