Civic University – Democracy, AI, and the Public Imagination

The following excerpt comes from Civic University: Democracy, AI, and the Public Imagination, a conversation between Beth Simone Noveck and Oliver Escobar, Chair of Public Policy and Democratic Innovation at the University of Edinburgh.

Beth and Oliver explore the role of universities amid political, technological, and social uncertainty.

Part of the Future University series, the discussion looks beyond the immediate challenges facing higher education to ask a larger question: what kind of institutions do we need for the future, and how can universities help shape it?

Watch the full discussion and read Beth Simone Noveck’s op-ed in The Times on how AI can help leaders govern more effectively.

Oliver: You think about universities as more than knowledge institutions. More like democratic institutions that can help societies to navigate technological transformation, strengthen participation, improve people's lives, and solve public problems. But what does that look like in practice?

Beth: Thank you. Well, you introduced me, so let me introduce you to some of my students.

There is a wonderful team of students right now working with a group called Innovate Public Schools in California. They sat down with parents who don't speak English to build an AI tool that helps families translate, summarize, understand, and advocate for their children with disabilities.

Right now, if you are a parent of a child with a disability in the United States, you receive a 100-page PDF written somewhere between government-speak and bureaucratese. Hard enough to understand with the assistance of a lawyer and psychologist. If you do not speak English well, if you have low literacy, or if you're simply a busy working person, it can be extraordinarily difficult to navigate.

Universities may be one of the last places where we can put societal problems at the center of what we do. It is one of the few places where we can work across sectors and disciplines to tackle complex challenges.

These students have gone out and built this tool together with families and are now deploying it to hundreds more families so they can better advocate for their children.

I could go on with other examples of students whose education centers not simply on understanding the world, but on making it better.

We know from the survey data that young people—and not only young people—want to have an impact. People want to do good, not just do well. For me, the civic university focuses on a simple question: What is the role of the university, not simply in understanding the world, but in figuring out how we improve it?

Oliver: How much of that is possible given the realities of today's university sector? What would universities need to do to recover that sense of public purpose?

Beth: It's one thing to study a problem from inside the ivory tower. It's another thing entirely to go out and define a problem with the people most affected by it.

That is counterintuitive to our notion of ourselves as experts within the university.

In medicine, I know that to be an effective doctor, I have to cure the patient. I can't afford to just study the disease.

In other disciplines, I think we've lost our way to some extent in forgetting that we study problems in order to make someone's life better.

To do that requires humility. It requires learning how to listen, collaborate, and work in partnership with communities.

Oliver: We do a great deal of meaningful engagement work, but often despite existing systems and institutional incentives. How do we create a more enabling environment?

Beth: For a generation, we have pushed students toward entrepreneurship and business. The idea was that everyone would become the next Mark Zuckerberg, create jobs, generate wealth, and make the world better.

There is much to like about that vision. But Mark Zuckerberg's mantra was "move fast and break things." We now live in a world where we need to move fast and fix things.

We've also realized that many of the jobs we trained students for may not be there in the same way. AI is transforming how work gets done.

So we need to do something different.

Universities may be one of the last places where we can put societal problems at the center of what we do. It is one of the few places where we can work across sectors and disciplines to tackle complex challenges.

We also have to lay some of the blame at our own feet in universities. We tend to specialize in talking about what is wrong and spend too little time asking what we can do right.

And this creates an opportunity to do well at the same time. Businesses increasingly want people who can solve complex problems, communicate effectively, and learn how to use new tools.

Oliver: It's remarkable how difficult it is to make the case for investing in democracy itself. Why do societies invest so little in democratic innovation? Where is the democracy moonshot?

Beth: We too often confuse politics with governance.

We focus on elections and political drama, while paying far less attention to what happens the day after the election—how government actually works and how institutions solve problems.

We also have to lay some of the blame at our own feet in universities. We tend to specialize in talking about what is wrong and spend too little time asking what we can do right.

And then there is a failure of imagination.

We can imagine moonshots for curing disease or solving environmental challenges. But we rarely ask what it would mean to invest in the machinery of democracy itself—to create institutions that are both more participatory and more effective at solving problems.

Oliver: You're coining this term "democratic AI." What do you mean by it?

Beth: The conversation about AI is often trapped between two extremes. On one side is the fear that AI will destroy jobs, undermine democracy, and accelerate inequality. On the other is the promise that AI will generate unprecedented growth and innovation.

Both conversations matter.

But neither asks the question I care most about: What can these tools do to help us solve public problems?

For me, democratic AI begins with public purpose. It is not defined exclusively by whether a model is public or private, open source or proprietary. It is defined by whether it helps us address challenges that matter: improving education, strengthening public services, expanding access to justice, or helping communities make better decisions.

Second, democratic AI is participatory. It means building technology with people, not simply for them. The most successful projects begin with listening. They start by asking what people need and then designing tools together.

Third, democratic AI must be judged by its impact. We spend enormous amounts of time asking whether systems are faster, cheaper, or more efficient. Those questions matter, but they are not enough. The real question is whether people's lives improve as a result.

Universities should be places that help society ask better questions. In an age of AI, one of the most important questions we can ask is how to create institutions that are both more participatory and more effective at solving problems.

The web gave us thirty years of talking. AI gives us the possibility of listening.

For the first time, we have tools that can help institutions absorb, synthesize, and learn from large-scale public input in ways that were previously impossible. The challenge is not technological. The challenge is whether we choose to use those tools to strengthen democratic life.

That is why the civic university matters. Universities can become laboratories for democratic problem-solving, engaging students from every discipline in tackling real-world challenges alongside communities.