What Is the Place of Democracy in an Intelligent Device World?
Democracy is one of the most appreciated and encouraged concepts through the world. One of its pillars is equality, suggesting that all humans are equal in terms of choice, vote and decision-making. In the future (and already now), artificial intelligence empowers many devices to take more and more decisions, based on data and machine learning. An important question emerging from this new shift will be if the concept of democracy will need to be revisited with the strong upcoming of AI?Democracy as a concept was created to regulate human governance, given that they were the only beings reaching the intelligence level required to discuss decisions and share power. But now that artificial forms of intelligence are coming, will their existence be taken into consideration in different future decisions? Will intelligent devices have the same weight as humans/citizens with the same level of knowledge? What gives legitimacy to mankind to hold the ultimate power over other intelligent forms?
Anass Sedrati is a PhD candidate in IoT security and governance, and a Wikipedia administrator.
