Comment by Prince Sarpong

The legitimacy of AI systems must rest not on their utility or performance, but on the collective processes that determine their existence, scope, and direction. What is needed is a model of epistemic democracy, and thus a political framework that extends democratic accountability into the cognitive systems that mediate social life. I would therefore argue that a transition to epistemic democracy requires three fundamental shifts in the way we conceive of technological power. First, we must move from transparency to participation. Rather than merely disclosing how AI works (an 'after-the-fact' transparency that provides no agency), governance must include public deliberation on whether and how such systems should exist. [...] A true epistemic democracy requires independent citizen assemblies with the interdisciplinary expertise and binding authority to evaluate not just a model’s safety, but its social and democratic 'fit'—the right to veto systems that are fundamentally incompatible with human autonomy.