Rebooting Democracy in the Age of AI

Brazil is pioneering AI-powered participatory governance at scale, processing input from 1.4 million citizens and turning public proposals into policy reports. From Maine’s 33 recommendations for responsible AI to Brookings’ call for shared data infrastructure to unlock housing supply in 50 cities, we showcase how leaders are solving problems in new ways with the help of AI. We spotlight new research cataloging 70+ LLM tools aimed at improving online discourse, examine the surge of deepfakes in European elections, and share lessons from 20+ InnovateUS workshops. Plus: two essays from Beth Simone Noveck on why augmentation beats automation and why AI agents can’t fix broken institutions.

When Brazil's federal government launched its 2023 Participatory Pluriannual Plan, the response was massive: 1.4 million participants submitted over 8,200 proposals through the Brasil Participativo platform. But volume creates a challenge, as manually processing thousands of contributions is slow and resource-intensive, often causing valuable insights to slip through the cracks. Now, Brazil is pioneering an open-source AI system that automatically analyzes citizen feedback, generates comprehensive reports, and tracks which suggestions made it into final policies. The result is a new model for democratic intelligence, one that transforms the flood of public input into structured, actionable knowledge without losing the nuance of individual voices.

The Agentic State is an ambitious and inspiring blueprint for rebuilding government around AI agents that can act and decide autonomously. It powerfully diagnoses real failures in how the public sector designs, delivers, and manages services. While AI is giving us ways to accelerate change, the prescribed cure may be premature: most of what’s broken in government requires organizational reform, not automation.