Cognitive diversity in democracies combat authoritarian use of AI

In contrast to this model of ‘epistemic democracy’ [], the seemingly ‘only technical’ understanding of AI provides a fertile ground for the authoritarian or even totalitarian idea that political representation is fixed, unchangeable, and the process of deliberation concluded. As argued in the introduction, authoritarian regimes might be performing better regarding the development of some aspects of AI due to unrestricted data gathering [, ], and AI likely promotes digital authoritarian practices [,,,,]; a similar positive feedback loop between AI and authoritarian regimes is reflected in the reductionist tendencies of AI in terms of representation []. The positive feedback loop between authoritarian rule and some conceptions of AI is partly grounded in their shared ‘closed’ modes of representation compared to the permanently contested mode of representation in open democratic debates. By relating AI to epistemological openness and cognitive diversity, democracies can counteract this positive feedback loop. It is likely that already today, democracies allow for more cognitive diversity to be represented in data than authoritarian regimes since censorship and other modes of repression encourage uniformity, and particularly uniformity regarding official data. Whilst this philosophical speculation should be subjected to further empirical research, this thesis can be strengthened by a compelling case: former Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently underlined that the extremely successful dialogue-centred approach of OpenAI would not be possible in a country such as China that is characterized by free speech restrictions []