Rebooting Democracy in the Age of AI

Artificial intelligence is often portrayed as a force that will destroy jobs. In this essay, Seth Harris argues that it can also expand opportunity. By using AI to identify and remove unnecessary college degree requirements in state hiring, governments can reduce barriers to public employment, address racial and class disparities, and fill critical roles more efficiently. Backed by new research underway from the Burnes Center for Social Change, supported by the GitLab Foundation, he outlines how thoughtfully deployed AI can break down barriers and accelerate the shift to skills-based hiring.

The current controversy over the Pentagon’s AI contracts reveals a deeper issue: governments are shaping the AI market through procurement in the wrong ways or not at all, failing to make demands that AI strengthen democracy and improve governance. As AI becomes core public infrastructure, public institutions must use their purchasing power deliberately by requiring portability, accountability, and interoperability and prioritizing use in the public interest. This post explains the public conversation we are having about public and democratic AI andhow governments can buy, build, and govern AI on the public’s terms.

This week on Reboot Democracy, Beth Simone Noveck explores how governments can provide safe, affordable access to AI at scale, arguing that the real question is not buy versus build, but who controls the infrastructure. In Research Radar, she examines academic warnings about uncritical adoption and reframes the challenge as one of power and oversight. Luca Cominassi and Beth Simone Noveck then argue that sovereignty and regulation mean little without institutional capacity. Beyond Reboot, Washington, DC, ties AI training to procurement; Colorado debates data center safeguards, Stanford HAI researchers clarify what AI sovereignty requires, and new evidence shows little electoral penalty for AI-enabled deception. NPR examines bot swarms and the U.S. Department of Labor releases a national AI literacy framework.