In this chapter, the philosopher Mathias Risse reflects on the medium and long-term prospects and challenges democracy faces from AI. Comparing the political nature of AI systems with traffic infrastructure, the author points out AI’s potential to greatly strengthen democracy, but only with the right efforts. The chapter starts with a critical examination of the relation between democracy and technology with a historical perspective before outlining the techno skepticism prevalent in several grand narratives of AI. Finally, the author explores the possibilities and challenges that AI may lead to in the present digital age. He argues that technology critically bears on what forms of human life get realised or imagined, as it changes the materiality of democracy (by altering how collective decision making unfolds) and what its human participants are like. In conclusion, Mathias Risse argues that both technologists and citizens need to engage with ethics and political thoughts generally to have the spirit and dedication to build and maintain a democracy-enhancing AI infrastructure.

Technology has been at the heart of our species since the dawn of mankind. The genus homo, to which we all belong, split from a common hominin ancestor about 7 million years ago. This means ‘yesterday’ in geological time: if life on Earth were a 24-hour day, the genus homo would have inhabited this planet for only a couple of minutes. This recency is attested by our genetic heritage as our DNA is 98.8% identical to that of chimpanzees. In this relatively short time, our species and our species’ proximal ancestors established a dynamic and creative relationship with their environment. In particular, they developed the ability to modify their environment with the goal of developing technological tools by means of which they could, in turn, further modify that environment in a more radical and transformative way and thereby even modify themselves. We call ‘technology’ any product of human (and also, in principle, other species’) labor resulting in physical systems that would not be present in the natural environment in the absence of such labor. It has been estimated that as early as 3.4 million years ago, our remote ancestor Australopithecus afarensis, a small-brained early hominin species, used stone tools to separate meat from the bones of large mammals.

Fears surrounding Dear John letters have often encoded larger concerns – in civilian society and military communities – about new communications technologies that purport to bridge the gap between “over here” and “over there”: the home front and the war zone. From reel-to-reel tape recordings in Vietnam to cellular telephony, email, and social media in Iraq and Afghanistan, the double-edged character of technological innovation has fueled anxiety about the sustainability of love in wartime, and the lethality of Dear Johns in particular. Many observers of wartime’s emotional landscape have equated speed of delivery with a more devastating coup de grâce. As the digital age has brought service personnel and civilians into more continuous contact, “home” has come to appear (in the eyes of some military commentators) less a point of sentimental anchorage than a dangerous source of toxicity. But this chapter cautions against uncritical endorsement of a “ballistic” theory of communication that equates physical velocity with psychological impact. Servicemen in past wars found slow-moving mail – or protracted silence – just as hard to process as texts zapped in real-time across continents.

Digitalization and the development of automated systems, as well as the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI), have radically changed the legal landscape and will continue to impact law at an accelerated pace. These developments have led to the creation of a new industry, legal tech (LT), which aims at creating technological applications specifically tailored for law and the legal market. LT includes a broad range of applications: some of the most prominent and recurrent examples include automation in the drafting of contracts, “mining” case-law, or the creation of smart dispute resolution systems not requiring human intervention. As a result, operations that were previously unthinkable, or that would demand an enormous amount of human resources, can now be readily done through numerous legal services available to lawyers, other professionals, and consumers.1 The rise of LT has brought about various responses, from those who advocate the innovating potential of LT2 to legal traditionalists that consider the replacement of human resources by technology to be highly disruptive.3 In addition, there are those who advocate for a level-headed distinction between “hype” and reality.4 Nonetheless, it would be shortsighted not to see that the advancement of LT is going to have a profound impact on the legal sector, in a degree similar to that which industrialization had on manufacturing.

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplet’s: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”