Rebooting Democracy in the Age of AI

Governments are adopting powerful new technologies faster than their systems are built to learn. This piece by Cassandra Madison at the Center for Civic Futures argues that responsible innovation requires more than access to tools. It requires safe, structured spaces for experimentation. By treating experimentation as public infrastructure, governments can learn early, surface risks before they scale, and make better decisions when the stakes are highest.

InnovateUS launches the Observatory of Public Sector AI to examine the impact of AI training and use. Princeton's Arvind Narayanan and State of Hawaii Chief Data Officer Rebecca Cai dig into the pros and cons of predictive AI use in government, explains Stephan Schmidt. Anita McGahan discusses Christian Bason on how AI can help public institutions move beyond rigid hierarchies toward more humane, trust-based ways of working; and Aziza Umarova shows how Uzbekistan and Bhutan are mapping schools with AI and crowdsourcing. States continue expanding public-sector AI laws despite looming federal preemption battles. South Korea advances a comprehensive AI regulatory framework, and a new report traces how data-center expansion is shifting environmental, labor, and community-level governance decisions.

Crowdsourced mapping of schools in Uzbekistan and Bhutan combined with AI data analysis created greater insight into on-the-ground conditions. By treating geography as essential, spatial data, participatory collection, and AI analysis reshaped how evidence-informed public investment and policy decisions are made in Uzbekistan and Bhutan.