Comment by Claudia Chwalisz

There's a lot of discussion about democracy and AI going on these days. I'm looking forward to diving into a conversation about it at the Mozilla Foundation community convening this Thursday - join us! A sneak peek at some thoughts I'll expand upon: First I think we need to interrogate: what do we even mean by democracy. The dominant narrative of democracy = elections has taken hold, anchoring us in a narrow conception of the term, far away from its original meaning. Part of the problem today is that our practices and institutions have a veneer of people power, whereas in reality they concentrate power in the hands of the few. We live in elected oligarchies that we call democracies; no wonder people lament that they're not functioning properly! The debate tends to be framed in a binary way, though. Either we defend today's institutions, or we slide into autocracy. Yet there is growing practice and support for democratic innovations that draw on ancient practices like sortition (random selection of decision makers), deliberation, and rotation of power - like citizens' assemblies.