Using AI to Support Public Deliberation: A Conversation with Audrey Tang
In this workshop, Audrey Tang and Danielle Allen discuss how AI-enabled civic technologies, paired with radical transparency and thoughtful institutional design, can help democracies respond to problems faster, govern more fairly, and rebuild public trust. Lessons from Taiwan, California, and other contexts show how combining digital tools with in-person engagement can surface common ground and reduce polarization. Together, the speakers argue that democracy can meet today’s challenges when it is designed to be fast, fair, and genuinely engaging for the people it serves.
Published on Dec 19, 2025 by Dane Gambrell and Beth Simone Noveck
Top Takeaways from Subcommittee Hearing on Future of Constituent Engagement
A House Administration Subcommittee hearing featuring Dr. Beth Simone Noveck, Dr. Michael Neblo, Aubrey Wilson, and Ken Ward examined the future of constituent engagement with Congress. The discussion focused on AI implementation, including: how internal tools can support staff accuracy and accountability; why structured and representative deliberation outperforms open-ended intake; and what lessons Congress can draw from international legislatures that have modernized faster. Together, the takeaways highlight the challenge of rebuilding congressional capacity so that public participation yields insight, not overload.
Published on Dec 18, 2025
AI and Lawmaking
The Future of Constituent Engagement with Congress
In testimony before the House Subcommittee on Modernization and Innovation, Dr. Beth Simone Noveck argues that Congress’s challenge is too little institutional capacity to use public input. With committee staff and in-house expertise sharply reduced and more than 81 million constituent communications each year, traditional engagement has become costly, slow, and often performative. Drawing on examples from the U.S., Brazil, Germany, among others, she shows how pairing disciplined engagement design with AI tools can help Congress synthesize public input, surface expertise, and strengthen lawmaking at scale.
Published on Dec 17, 2025 by Beth Simone Noveck
Research Radar
Public AI: Policies for democratic and sustainable AI infrastructures
This analysis by OECD.AI contributors offers a clear, practical blueprint for “public AI.” It maps where power concentrates across the AI tech stack, such as compute, data, and models, and shows how governments can intervene without trying to outspend frontier labs. Its distinctive contribution is a gradient approach that makes AI more public through democratic control, public-interest functions, and open components, paired with three concrete pathways to reduce dependence on corporate oversight and build meaningful public alternatives.
Published on Dec 16, 2025 by Alek Tarkowski, Albert Cañigueral, Felix Sieker and Luca Cominassi
AI for Governance
Learning Together to Improve Public Service
Since its creation in 2023, InnovateUS’s training offerings have supported public professionals in making sense of change together, building capacity, and strengthening their ability to make informed decisions in practice. Our Spring 2026 workshop offering, which we’re presenting today, reflects insights from learners, partners, and experts about the challenges facing public service today.
Published on Dec 15, 2025 by Agueda Quiroga
AI and Law
New Tools to Deliver Better Services for all New Jerseyans
Dave Cole, New Jersey’s Chief Innovation Officer, argues that states now have both the opportunity and the responsibility to build durable public infrastructure for responsible AI. With support from the new Public Benefit Innovation Fund, New Jersey will expand its statewide generative AI platform to develop secure tools to automate enrollments and reduce administrative burden, and rigorously test these solutions across partner agencies. Through open-source code, shared training resources, and cross-government coordination, the state aims to model how AI can meaningfully strengthen service delivery.
Published on Dec 11, 2025 by Dave Cole
Global AI Watch
Humanism Over Hegemony: Inside Italy’s New AI Law
Italy has become the first European country to move beyond implementing the EU AI Act and enact its own sovereignty-driven AI law; one that anchors innovation in public oversight, workers’ rights, human accountability, and sector-specific democratic safeguards. The statute challenges the accelerating, corporate-centric governance model emerging in the U.S., yet it also suffers from limited vision, modest investment, and operational ambiguity. Italy may not win a global race for AI supremacy, but it is trying to redefine the terms of that race by insisting that democratic institutions and not commercial imperatives set the boundaries for how AI enters civic life.
Published on Dec 10, 2025 by Beth Simone Noveck and Luca Cominassi
Research Radar
Research Radar: Synthetic Data Is Redefining Representation
As governments experiment with AI to simulate public opinion, new questions are emerging about who these systems truly represent. This Research Radar examines the Collective Intelligence Project’s Digital Twin Evaluation Framework—a developing method for testing whether AI models can mirror real human opinion patterns—and explores the democratic risks of relying on synthetic publics in policymaking.
Published on Dec 9, 2025 by Elana Banin
AI for Governance
Human by Design: Reflections from the OECD Global Roundtable on Equal Access to Justice
In November 2025, global justice leaders met in Madrid for the OECD Roundtable on Equal Access to Justice to examine how systems can adapt to rising demand and rapid technological change. New Jersey’s Public Defender Jennifer Sellitti's experience highlighted that AI can strengthen fairness and access when deployed with clear safeguards and purpose. By building secure tools, improving legal workflows, and shaping statewide standards on transparency and bias, New Jersey is showing how responsible innovation can reinforce trust and improve justice outcomes.
Published on Dec 8, 2025 by Jennifer Sellitti
Governing AI
Toward AI Governance That Works: Examining the Building Blocks of AI and the Impacts
As governments and international bodies race to establish guardrails for AI, most of the global agenda still focuses on managing what AI systems produce—their outputs. This article argues that such an approach is incomplete. The real foundations of safe, rights-respecting, and equitable AI lie upstream in how data is collected, governed, shared, and stewarded. Without integrating mature data governance practices, such as data stewardship and data commons, into AI governance, countries will struggle to protect fundamental rights or ensure that AI’s economic and social benefits are distributed fairly. A future-ready AI governance framework must therefore unite input and output governance into a single, coherent system.
Published on Dec 3, 2025 by Dr. Stefaan Verhulst and Dr. Friederike Schüür
Research Radar: The White House Wants a Scientific Genesis. It May Trigger a Democratic Exodus
The Trump Administration’s Genesis Mission aims to unify federal supercomputers, datasets, and AI systems into a single national platform for scientific discovery. But as Beth Simone Noveck argues, the plan centralizes unprecedented research power while offering almost no role for universities, communities, or the public, raising urgent questions about access, transparency, and democratic accountability.
Published on Dec 2, 2025 by Beth Simone Noveck
Governing AI
Accountable Algorithms: Blending Individual Rights and Collective Oversight in Government AI
AI is already shaping government decisions, but bright-line bans on automated decisions are not enough to manage the complex “middle space” where most automation now operates. Effective governance requires both individual rights — so people can understand and challenge decisions about them — and collective oversight that lets journalists, civil society, and regulators scrutinize systems as a whole. By blending transparency, redress, and sustained human responsibility, governments can harness AI to improve services while safeguarding democratic accountability.
Published on Dec 1, 2025 by Beth Simone Noveck and Dane Gambrell
AI Tools
QHLD: Making Spain’s Parliament Understandable with AI
Political Watch’s “What Our Representatives Do” tool (QHLD) organizes thousands of congressional initiatives into clear, searchable themes, making political priorities visible, comparable, and actionable. By exposing imbalances like the 198 initiatives on squatting versus just 54 on social housing, QHLD shows how structured, understandable data can reconnect citizens with their representatives. Yet the project also highlights a global challenge for civic tech: limited funding, slow adoption, and the high cost of responsible AI integration. Making democracy legible is possible, but only if we invest in tools designed to share power, not just document it.
Published on Nov 26, 2025 by Celia Zafra and Pablo Martín
AI and Problem Solving
Solving Public Problems with Artificial Intelligence
The Solving Public Problems course has helped learners worldwide tackle complex challenges. The course teaches how to leverage technology, data, and collective wisdom in our communities to design powerful solutions to contemporary problems. Now, Beth Simone Noveck is exploring how to remake it for the AI era, using technology to make problem-solving skills easier to learn without losing the human connection at its core. Your input is needed!
Published on Nov 25, 2025 by Beth Simone Noveck
AI and Labor
Big Tech Wants AI Without Rules. Here’s How Workers are Fighting Back
AI is reshaping the workplace faster than public policy can keep up, often in ways that expand corporate power, weaken worker rights, and undermine democratic oversight. But across sectors, workers and unions are showing that this trajectory isn’t inevitable. Through collective bargaining, policy advocacy, and new uses of AI for organizing, they’re securing real guardrails on surveillance, algorithmic management, and job displacement. This piece explores how worker power will determine whether AI serves people or replaces them.
