AI technologies inside the state

BRLSI’s Democracy Under Threat series invites you to pause and take stock by surveying the wealth of history and political thinking which underpins our long-held democratic systems and institutions. It explores the laying down of democratic principles from Ancient Athens to the present day, and takes in current scenarios in international geopolitics, while considering Britain as its own small island with its own set of political traditions.

So what about AI technologies inside the state: the challenges for authority and political rule? Who gets to decide, what, for whom, how, and how are they held to account?  An upcoming talk by Professor Emma Carmel of University of Bath, examines how the relationship between technology and statehood has shaped political rule and authority historically, and what this means for democratic states in an age of AI. Setting the use of AI technologies in a broader historical and political economy context, this talk addresses how the specific characteristics of AI technologies and their use in governing present more than just a new phase in the wider “digitalisation” of governance of the last half-century, in four key ways. Taken together, these have transformative implications for our understandings of democratic statehood in the twenty-first century.

Emma Carmel is Professor of Governance and Public Policy. She is a history-trained political sociologist who investigates the relationship between statehood and society. Through a series of international collaborations, her scholarship has theorised new ways of understanding how policy and politics exert effects on society: in social and labour market policies; migration; and through the use and regulation of digital technologies. She is currently researching the political economy of AI technologies and the future of the liberal state.

A discount of 20% is on offer to all those purchasing five tickets or more from the series, excluding the conference on the 4th of July.

To learn more about Democracy Under Threat and the exciting range of speakers coming up as part of the programme, don’t forget to follow our Democracy Under Threat Webpage: https://www.brlsi.org/democracyunderthreat/