REBOOT

A timely tour of unchecked AI’s political hazards asks citizens to take the wheel.

Noveck, a professor at Northeastern University, led the Technology, Innovation, and Government Reform team in the Obama administration and global projects promoting democratic participation. She sounds the alarm on AI’s rapidly evolving power in the U.S. and around the world and its possible harms. She also argues that AI can be used to promote truly democratic goals with political will and public engagement. A timeline of early AI systems shows that implementing today’s more powerful models for public good requires understanding their limitations. The author calls out social media manipulations—deepfakes, voice clones, misinformation, and fakes, including video of Ron DeSantis withdrawing from the presidential race and audio of Joe Biden urging New Hampshire voters to skip a primary election. Globally, AI tools now transcribe legislative meetings in the Netherlands, Bahrain, Argentina, Estonia, Brazil, and India. The U.S. Congress has been slow to adapt. Noveck warns of “great risk in maintaining the status quo while the world changes around us.” She also scorns Elon Musk’s AI-powered DOGE efforts, writing, “we should not mistake the cynical appointment of unqualified cronies and political theater for serious reforms.” A “possibilist, who neither hopes nor fears without reason,” Noveck admits that AI tools are black boxes with privacy, surveillance, and bias issues. Her book presents a wealth of thoughtful examples, but solutions to these problems and AI’s effects on diverse political systems around the world is a larger topic than this volume can deeply address. Still, this sobering account reveals how tensions between the promise of a direct democracy and compromises and challenges of a representative democracy are exacerbated by profit-driven AI models, inviting serious rethinking of public life.

A smart, incisive, and sharply critical examination of AI’s impacts on our society.