Talk to a Human . . . Speak to a Human . . . Talk to a [presses zero, presses zero, presses zero] Speak with a—: On AI Agents as Partners in Democratic Deliberation
There is a rapidly developing normative literature in political science and philosophy concerning the potential effects of artificial intelligence on the deliberative, epistemic, representative, and policymaking dimensions of democratic governance. By contrast, the effects of AI on the experience of citizenship and civic education have received relatively little attention. This paper looks to the sorts of generative artificial intelligence that have recently emerged as something approximating human interlocutors in order to consider what may be lost (and gained) when highly sophisticated machine interlocutors become not just a part of civic discourse but also our partners in democratic deliberation.
Lowry Pressly is a lecturer in the Department of Political Science, the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, and the Stanford Civics Initiative.
Pressly’s book, The Right to Oblivion: Privacy and the Good Life (Harvard University Press 2024), offers a radically new defense of privacy and a philosophical account of the importance of oblivion to human life. He has recently published in Ethics, Political Theory, and Contemporary Political Theory, and has also contributed critical essays and interviews to The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Point, Public Books, and elsewhere. His works of fiction and translation also appear widely.
Pressly’s philosophical and literary work has been recognized with several awards, including the Leo Strauss Award, the Robert Noxon Toppan Prize, the Bowdoin Prize, and the Thomas Morton Memorial Award for Literary Excellence.
Pressly received his PhD from Harvard University in December 2020.