KT4D · Knowledge Technologies for Democracy

AI and big data are fundamentally interwoven into our societies, culture and indeed into our expectations and conceptions of democratic governance and exchange. They can also, however, contribute to an environment for citizens that is distinctly anti-democratic. KT4D will harness the benefits of an understanding of these as knowledge technologies to foster more inclusive civic participation in democracy. To achieve this, we will develop and validate tools, guidelines and a Digital Democracy Lab demonstrators platform. These results will be validated across three user needs scenarios: 1) building capacity for citizens and citizen-facing Civil Society Organisations (CSOs); 2) creating regulatory tools and services for Policy and CSOs; and 3) improving awareness of how to design ethically and mindfully for democracy principles in academic and industrial software development. Our work is underpinned by the understanding that to fully address the social and fundamental rights costs of AI and big data, we need more than just technological fixes, we need more than just technological fixes, we need to address the underlying cultural influences and barriers. Most importantly, we understand the threats to democracy of AI and big data not only through the nature of what they do, but via the cultural disruptions they create with power dynamics they shift, their tendency toward opacity, and the speed at which they change. KT4D’s ambitious and disruptive results will drive transformation in how democracy and civic participation are facilitated in the face of rapidly changing knowledge technologies, enabling actors across society to capitalise on the many benefits these technologies can bring in terms of community empowerment, social integration, individual agency, and trust in both institutions and technological instruments, while confidently mitigating potential ethical, legal and cultural risks.