I started off with this question is AI bad for democracy.
And I use various entries to answer the question and also to clarify
what I'll do today is to we have to focus on this concept of epistemic agency.
I talked to this one one way this topic can be approached.
So yeah it works. So the context of this is that concerns about democracy,
which also relates to general context in which there is a tendency towards authoritarianism even in countries that pretend to be democracies.
And in that context and there's this new technology, and then the question is, what is it going to do?
Is it going to have an impact? And if so, how?
And then as a philosopher, I want to conceptualise that. I want to to understand it by using concepts and I want to make arguments about it.
So that's what I'm doing. I started more with the ethics of AI, but at the moment I'm very interested in using political philosophy to do that.
This particular talk connects to epistemology and of course, moral philosophy.
But yeah, that's also a kind of context for this talk
So the question is, is AI bad for democracy, of course, has to start with this concept of what is AI
And the various forms of AI today.
AI is very popular, usually refers to machine learning, use of machine learning with big data.
The computer helps us to find veterans in this data.
It's basically a kind of statistics machine. And yeah, instead of appearing as something that only does calculations,
suddenly these technologies, you know, engage, for example, with language, use language.
One could say famous examples of you could be in similar,
but also can be used for for political purposes, for example, for analysing data of social media users.
And this can be politically useful.
Democracy is the other concept, and this may at least as vague if you don't say more about what I do for the purpose of this paper
in stock is to to just make make a distinction between thin versions of versions of democracy,
which are all about voting and voting when when you have a system, a representational system with voting,
then according to those conception of democracy, you have a democracy in your file.
I personally sympathise with, I think, a richer conception of democracy.
But then what? It's it's gets tricky. But but I find it very interesting.
So, for example, you have a famous, you know, this kind of direction,
things that deliberation and discussion is important in a democracy, not just voting.
You need to actively engage citizens. So something also comes from from my country, Belgium.
It has anachronistic conceptions, more of a struggle and having a voice.
These are all concepts.
And I think that that is really not just about voting, but there is a lot about language, also about discussion, which can be rational.
Less rational can be emotional also.
But it's, you know, what they have in common, these notions is that the citizens are supposed to engage.
They don't only get something, they also have to do something.
They have to actively somehow engage it in their political community by at least discussing this these common questions.
Another way to talk about this is to talk about political agency, because if citizens are allowed to do that, can do that, are encouraged to do that.
That means that one can say that I'm allowed to to freely vote.
That's a political agency. But in this ritual conception, political agency means much more.
It means that you're, you know, being allowed and being able to reason, to discuss, to defend your view.
For example, something that was normal for philosophers.
But it's not the government and political system that we have that all citizens do this things.
And then being able to to make your voice heard, for example, or in another way, another form of political agency.
So it all depends on what you mean by democracy.
What I'm very interested in for this talk is the conditions for democracy.
The question what is needed as conditions in order to get all these forms of agency and democracy going?
And yeah, partly that can be about principles such as freedom.
If you're if you don't have some basic freedoms, you're doing them authoritarian system,
perhaps totalitarian system, then that's not you know, the conditions for democracy are not fulfilled.
So you cannot even talk about let's have a rational discussion, for example, because your your imprisoned or your reason to be imprisoned.
For example, in Hannah Arendt,
there is also an interesting link to the social what kind of social environment do we do we need in a society to to have democracy.
And she makes a connection which with loneliness and the opposite of that.
So that's interesting. And then what is relevant for this talk is knowledge and therefore also education.
What kind of knowledge do citizens need to exercise those forms of political democratic agency?
And then, yeah, we need to look at ways not to talk about that notion.
And one way to do that, it's just one way.
And there's many possibilities here. But one way is to use the concepts of epistemic agency, which are function in social media.
Small and yeah, I find it an interesting concept.
Because then it would allow me to.
To make it more specific and make more specific. Okay. What exactly could be wrong with political agency, then?
When we look at the conditions for knowledge and what would be good, I'd be better in some sense.
I mean, what does it mean? So all my my questions that I ask can now be asking the more specific grade.
Maybe before I can ask these questions, I need to say something about epistemic agency.
So in psychology and in philosophy, the idea is that Asians want some control over their beliefs and have a certain degree,
descriptively speaking, a certain degree of control over their bodies.
And one can then have discussions, for example, how, how how voluntary is that formation of beliefs and in particular, in, in social epistemology?
The question is like given that we live in a social environment.
Yeah. How you know, how, how free and voluntary is the formation of beliefs?
Because we know, for example, from social psychology that our beliefs can be heavily influenced by our social environment.
So what you know what in that context means this kind of.
Indeed epistemic agency. Then what?
What I do. Being philosopher of technology.
I want to know. Like, what about the technological environments?
Or could say the techno social environment. So what if we bring in A.I. there, for example, and see how that impacts the social environment?
And does it change anything? What is it going to do to to epistemic agency and therefore, to to to these conditions for democracy?
So to make that connection more precise,
one could say that some degree of systemic agency is needed for a political agency in a democracy, especially in the first term.
But even in the in the in the Jim version, if the inversion means like I need some control over my degree of control over the formation of minorities.
Because why would voting make sense if I can opt for my own beliefs?
Right. So if everything is known, we could just ask, for example,
we could collect data about this that people have because there are manipulations, for example.
So this is needed. But also in this version, where, where discussion is important for democracy, very, is very important to have.
Yeah. The capacity to test myself for my beliefs reflect on these beliefs and also very important willing to revise them because you know,
by having a discussion, if everyone just like, you know,
this is what I believe and then at the end of the of the matter that these that all this this kind of reach of a sense of democracy,
that you also learn something that you are willing to, you know,
at least for for the duration of the discussion to to suspend holding on to those beliefs at all costs.
You know, and we willing to discuss them also of the willingness to take responsibility for one's beliefs,
willingness to, you know, voice them and and stand for them.
And then the willingness to be openly discussed and revised.
And I, I like to formulate that in terms of vulnerability.
Do do we have one or at least vulnerable to reflection and deliberation?
So then the question is, is the development and exercise of these forms of politically disciplined agency,
and is the exercise of responsibility of citizens possible under conditions shaped by the use of AI and other digital technologies,
especially in the social media environments or influenced by social media environments?
So that is the question. And my answer is that since I may influence body formation in various ways,
the exercise of forms of epistemic agency needed for political agency in a democracy becomes at least more difficult.
So this constitutes a kind of risk or risk for democracy.
There is no determinism because technological determinism would mean that you
have a technology and you have an effect and there's nothing to do about it.
This is not how our technology works, and this is not how politics in the social world works.
But it is interesting to conceptualise the influence and the risk.
So my conclusion will be that I am dangerous democracy, especially to conceptions of it.
And, you know, regardless, you know, regardless of other ways that I may endanger democracy.
So let's go into how I may influence the formation and revision of political beliefs, because that's then what's going on.
But how exactly are these beliefs enforced?
And I distinguish between three ways they are influenced.
One is a direct spending, and that's one, the manipulation of beliefs by politicians and the people they employ.
But there's also indirect and in terms of effects. One that has to do with knowledge and not so sure about that one.
This is something that I would really like to push accountable to discussion.
And then the third one is this phenomenon of epistemic bubbles.
Echo chambers and so on, which I think also impacts the receiving agency of people and therefore the political experience.
So these are the three parts of the paper.
So to in order to discuss that,
I picked up so experiment from Bondi that same as social epistemology literature or at least in literature on epistemic agency.
So there's a person, Claire raised in a racist community and comes to believe that people with white skin colour are superior.
And then the question is like, how can she, if she wants to change her belief, how can she change that belief?
And in this case towards a non racist one.
And the thought experiment from Bondi is all about social influence.
This person being in a social environment and therefore having difficulties to change belief and being raised in a certain environment.
And I'm interested in what about the technological influence?
Will there be able to exercise service agency to change beliefs under the influence of air?
So first, manipulation of beliefs. Social media campaigns based on analysis of data by means of AI and data science.
This is not not a thought experiment.
It is very real. There was this Cambridge Analytica case.
I'm happy that it wasn't called the Oxford Analytical Case, which I will talk in Cambridge later this spring.
So Cambridge Analytica was the case that Facebook Facebook users,
they produced data by their behaviour and these data are then harvested in that case without their consent talking about consent forms,
so without consent and also then used for microtargeting people to influence their voting behaviour.
So this is very clearly intended use of AI for the influencing the beliefs of people.
So. So to pick up Claire's examples is, for example, targeted by Trump political advertising in order to in that case,
you know, not having her change her beliefs to stick to her beliefs and vote for her for political direction.
So this this case can be interpreted as a case of belief formation and revision by means of direct manipulation of beliefs.
It's somewhat comparable to nudging in the sense that no one is coarse.
And Claire writes, no one is forcing her to have a certain belief or to not provide services.
But there is some influence under the radar and influence.
So it's by passing this this capacity we have as a threshold autonomous beings, something that the philosophers find the victory brain.
So this is happening by means of this technology, by means of data science.
And one could conceptualise that as saying that less political agency is reduced,
as she is manipulated to change her beliefs or not change her beliefs without her knowledge.
So the manipulation, she doesn't know about us and we doubt her concerns.
And this clearly violates the requirements of Democratic citizens that it was the agency conditions for democratic citizenship.
Then there's the Second World.
So here my worry is that through air we get a lot of statistical knowledge out there, not always directly, but just through the results of it.
For example, if you use Chuck YouTube, it's all about statistics of the occurrence of words like if they occur together, that's counted.
And so that's is a certain statistics. And on the basis of that, this program.
Thanks.
Now this kind of mediation and bringing to the in the public sphere view of the of all the statistical information is problematic in various ways.
I think first probably because it's it's yeah, it's something that's that's not clear that that's happening.
It's something that if you look into the phenomenon, if you studied, if you if you're very interested in it, you can find out how A.I. works.
But many people use or will use technology without finding out all these things.
So they don't even know that this is based on statistical knowledge.
But more importantly for here, for this particular worry I have is that people would not be encouraged to look at causal nodes,
broken nodes, which we get through the sciences.
So in this case, for example, there might be statistical information about success in a certain society.
It could be that, for example, in American society, that people of a certain skin, skin colour whites are more successful.
But that that's statistics. Then it gets to air, it gets emphasised.
And my worry in terms of the changing of beliefs is that this, again,
renders a perceived agency the exercise of that more difficult because the statistical knowledge is offered as a default.
And I'm worried that people would not be encouraged to look at causal knowledge, global knowledge,
which would tell you that there is no causal relationship between skin colour and success in society.
So this this really, I think, makes it harder to change those beliefs.
And in the in the example and it's a problem in a democracy if,
if this statistical knowledge becomes more dominant in relation to the causal notes from the sciences, I'm not so sure about this point.
But I'm looking forward to just see what you think about the third point, which is also often a way of influencing people without intending.
So, um, because, although, you know,
some politicians might be interested that people stay in a certain bubble and just stay having the same beliefs, it also happens unintended.
So what is the phenomenon? The phenomenon is that if you're engaging through social media and in social media,
there is this activity to to to moderate, to to also creates this to to analyse the patterns.
And what happens there is that there's a danger that one always hears the same people,
talks to the same people and remains in what's called an epistemic bubble.
And in the literature, there's also the distinction epistemic bubbles and echo chambers.
I'm not so interested in that here. For me, it's important here to see this as a problem of epistemic agency again.
So if you exclude other voices, discredit other voices and distrust other sources, then we need to have this epistemic bubble.
And you will be less likely, I think, to revise your beliefs and put them vulnerable to discussion because you will always hear the same.
For example, Claire, he was always this white supremacist echoes and stays in her bubble.
And so I think there's a problem not only for the diversity of views as such,
but also because people are not encouraged to exercise their capacity for epistemic agency, which is problematic for for these democratic conditions.
So, yeah, this diminishes Susan's capacity to run the liberalism further.
Bill encourages rather people to feel confident, perhaps overcome overconfidence about their beliefs,
and this reduces their political agency again, not necessarily intended.
That can be done and it doesn't have to be and yeah.
Contributes to to that by also moderating social media in such a way that you will see always more boasts of the things that you like.
You really will see more opinions that you like.
And so in the end, you're just having this, this cosy thing with your political friends,
but you're insufficiently exposed to other views and you don't trust them so much anymore.
So those are three ways that I may influence epistemic agency, epistemic agency as relevant to democracy.
And, and, yeah, I think this was one way to to ask the question concerning democracy in a more specific way,
namely, what kind of systemic agency is needed for a Democratic political agency?
And people have suspicions of that kind of agency, given that age shapes agency, which,
of course my normative interests and normative interests to preserve democracy and a normative interest to to.
What's the relation between air and democracy?
So the answer given here can be summarised as follows Supposing that some degree of
and some forms of epistemic agency are needed for political agency in a democracy,
in the sense that at least according to the ideal, in a democracy I need to be able to freely for my beliefs,
to reflect on my political beliefs and to openly discuss these buildings with others, if necessary, revise them.
Then the exercise of such forms of epistemic agency is to render more difficult, if not endangered, by.
I support its internal manipulation of political beliefs and internal devoting of statistical knowledge as opposed to causal knowledge.
And so it's usually an internal creation and maintenance of seeming bubbles and echo chambers,
which discourages rendering still honourable discussion and revision.
So this is, of course a kind of export to work, but I think it can be further developed, can be developed, for example,
by looking at all sorts of other related issues that they're formulating noted epistemic agency, but using another concept.
And so also think about like how can democracy be undermined here?
And yeah, perhaps also empirical research could further support this claims or, or defuse some of these claims.
And for example, with epistemic bubbles, there are some also some research that shows that that next to this polarisation and doubles,
there's also a diversity of views on social media and of this kind of research,
as far as I see, it is not conclusive, but it's worth further engaging with.
So if this is the case, then, you know, to two ends with recommendations more towards the outside world is,
well, if these dangers are analysed are real,
then if we want to strengthen democracy, you know, this is of course, if, you know, there might be regimes and people who don't want that.
But if we want to strengthen democracy, then we need.
We need to regulate air and so that these phenomena are less and less, that there's less risk for this phenomena, and therefore it is influences.
But also, I think education when it comes to nurses is of course really important.
So we need to teach anyway for democracy people how to to exercise their political agency and create the knowledge basis for that.
And that means, I think, to to, you know, in this kind of social, technological environment,
when there's more pressure on belief for a vision and, you know, when it's more harder to exercise your political agency,
I think in such environments,
it is extremely important to enable and encourage citizens to reflect on their beliefs rather than vulnerable in open and public forums.
And yeah, I think this is not just an individual matter to do and to give individuals the skills,
but also requires an institutional reform because currently our educational institutions are are not necessarily geared at this.
You have to be lucky or privileged to have that kind of limitation.
So we need more of that kind of education, I think, for for everyone if we care about democracy.
So in closing, and I would like to quote one of my favourite political philosophers, John Dewey,
who said that democracy is not just a form of government, but primarily multiple social living.
And that is, of course, one of these richer ideals of democracy rights, not just about voting, but it's about a community also, in his view.
But of course, that raises a lot of questions about community, the role of community in modern society and and how how this can be done in practice.
But I think for this paper, this epistemic agency I've been talking about, and also in the form of, yeah,
the types of agency that are necessary to to make this kind of communication experience stronger and see this not only as as a,
as a means for some abstract kind of democracy, but as a as, you know, as a valuable thing.
I mean, so now these these are claims to stand apart from this paper.
But I just want to end with a in order to also disclose the narrative of direction where I personally would like to go.
However, I think the arguments in this paper are valid for all kinds of political agency and forms of democracy, so forth.
Technology, them. I think we need this. Political technologies that grow them, that enable rather than hinder such forms of living, such experiences.
And even without taking into account that of course,
this that stimulates such forms of epistemic agency of been talking about rather than hindering rather than than
risking to to erodes the the the conditions for formation of such such knowledge and such epistemic agency skills.
Thank you.