InnovateUS 
News That Caught Our Eye
Rebooting Democracy in the Age of AI
Insights on AI governance, public sector innovation, and democracy
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AI and Problem Solving
From AI Adoption to Public Value: InnovateUS Fall 2026 Live Learning Series
AI adoption in government is accelerating. The next challenge is making sure it creates public value. InnovateUS’s Fall 2026 Live Learning Series explores how public professionals can move beyond using AI to measuring its impact, governing it responsibly, and ensuring it improves outcomes for the people and communities government serves.
AI and Public Engagement
Democracy has a listening problem. These AI tools could actually help
This excerpt from Reboot: AI and the Race to Save Democracy was originally published in Fast Company on June 25, 2026.
Global AI Watch
An Open Society Needs an Open Market: The Compute Problem Cities, Regions, and Nations Share
A new report from the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project argues that cloud sovereignty is about more than building domestic alternatives. It is about ensuring governments, businesses, and public institutions have autonomy and agency. Using Canada’s highly concentrated cloud market as a case study, the authors explore how procurement policy, competition rules, and interoperability standards could reduce dependence on hyperscalers and create a more competitive marketplace for compute.
Research Radar: In Lobsters We Do Not Trust — The Wrong Path for AI and Democracy Part 2
In Part II, we examine the project’s core claim that AI agents could represent citizens in democratic deliberation. We argue that representation requires more than predicting preferences, that democratic participation is essential to civic learning and self-government, and that increasingly capable AI agents risk shifting authority away from citizens and toward algorithms. Democracy depends on people governing together, not on delegating judgment to machines.
AI for Impact
From Learning to Doing: An AI Coach for Public Engagement
A new AI for Impact-engineered public engagement coach is helping public servants turn what they learned about engagement into practical action. Built by The GovLab, the tool guides practitioners through real planning decisions, asks targeted questions about their specific project, and draws on engagement frameworks, case studies, and practitioner expertise to help them design more effective public participation processes.
Global AI Watch
Training Future Leaders to Shape AI in the Public-Interest: Insights from the Barcelona Public-Interest AI Accelerator
A new accelerator in Barcelona is exploring what it takes to prepare future leaders to navigate the emerging field of public-interest AI. The experience underscored that moving from principles to practice demands leaders who understand the technical, political, economic, and ethical dimensions of AI. Leaders who are equipped to ensure these technologies serve public goals, protect rights, and respond to the needs of diverse communities.
Research Radar: In Lobsters We Do Not Trust — The Wrong Path for AI and Democracy Part 1
Beth Simone Noveck and José Marti critique Habermolt, an experimental project that uses AI agents to deliberate and vote on behalf of people. They argue that the project reflects a longstanding strain of democratic theory that views public participation as a problem rather than a resource. At a moment of declining trust and growing institutional challenges, there should be less focus on whether AI can simulate democracy and more on how it can help governments listen, learn, and solve problems with the public. This Essay is Part 1 of 2 by Noveck and Martí.
How technology can help save democracy | The TechTank Podcast
Beth Simone Noveck recently appeared on the Brookings TechTank podcast to discuss her forthcoming book, Reboot: AI and the Race to Save Democracy (Yale University Press), arguing that AI offers powerful opportunities to strengthen democratic institutions and making the case for a "possibilist" approach to building tools that make democracy more responsive and effective.
AI and Education
The Herald: Pretending AI is not in schools could pose the biggest risk
Beth Simone Noveck spoke to The Herald (Scotland) about the role of AI in education and the need for decision-makers to engage with the technology rather than fear it, ahead of her talk at the Edinburgh Futures Institute's Civic University – Democracy, AI, and the Public Imagination."
AI for Governance
The Future of AI Runs Through Families: A conversation with Anya Kamenetz
What happens when the people working closest to families are forced to confront AI? In this conversation with Elana Banin, journalist Anya Kamenetz reflects on a three-day workshop that brought together service providers, advocates, technologists, policymakers, journalists, and philanthropists to wrestle with that question. The discussion explores why families have been largely absent from AI governance debates, how to shape the trajectory of technological change, and what it would take to build AI with communities rather than for them.
Global AI Watch
The World Cup Is Here. So is VAR. Here's What That Mess Can Teach Us About A.I.
Billions of people are about to watch the World Cup. And millions of them will spend part of it furious, not at the teams, but at football's most contentious technology: the Video Assistant Referee. In this article, Anirudh Dinesh argues we are making the same mistake in how we design, build, and use AI, and shares four lessons VAR can teach us about what happens when you build tech without asking who it's actually meant for.
Research Radar
Turning 20 Years of Community Board Data Into Searchable Public Knowledge
Local government generates enormous amounts of public knowledge, but much of it remains buried in disconnected PDFs and difficult-to-navigate archives. This post explores how the Block Party team used AI, semantic search, and human expertise to build a searchable archive of 17 years of Manhattan Community Board 3 resolutions, making local government decisions, institutional memory, and civic participation more accessible to residents, journalists, and public officials.
AI and Problem Solving
Civic University – Democracy, AI, and the Public Imagination
As AI transforms how we work, learn, and govern, what role should universities play? In this wide-ranging conversation, Beth Noveck argues that universities should become laboratories for democratic problem-solving, where students work with communities to address public challenges. She outlines a vision for "democratic AI" that puts public purpose, participation, and impact at the center of technological innovation.
Beth Simone Noveck on Cool Science Radio : AI and the Race to Save Democracy
In this interview with Cool Science Radio, Beth Simone Noveck discusses the central argument of her new book, Reboot: AI and the Race to Save Democracy, that AI is not simply a threat to democracy but a tool that can help make governments more effective, responsive, and participatory. Drawing on examples from around the world, she explores how AI can improve public services, strengthen civic engagement, and rebuild trust in democratic institutions.