On April 10-11, 2025, the Knight Institute will host a symposium to examine the risks that advanced artificial intelligence systems pose to democratic freedoms, to discuss sociotechnical as well as technical interventions to mitigate these risks, and to identify ways in which these systems may be employed to support democracy. The symposium, “Artificial Intelligence and Democratic Freedoms,” is a collaboration between the Knight Institute and the Institute’s Senior AI Advisor Seth Lazar. It will take place in person at Columbia University, and will be livestreamed.
Today we are excited to announce that the symposium will feature papers by a highly accomplished group of authors from a wide range of disciplines:
The Potential of Participatory Journalism for AI-Assisted Local News
Joshua P. Darr, Syracuse University
AI and Democratic Publics
Henry Farrell, Johns Hopkins University
Hahrie Han, Johns Hopkins University
Levels of Autonomy for AI Agents
Kevin Feng, University of Washington
David W. McDonald, University of Washington
Amy X. Zhang, University of Washington
A Proposal for an AI Disparity Index: From Harms to Disempowerment
Hoda Heidari, Carnegie Mellon University
AI Agents and Control
Peter Henderson, Princeton University
On the Necessity and Complexity of Evaluating Risks From Interactions Between Humans and Generative AI Systems
Lujain Ibrahim, University of Oxford
Saffron Huang, Collective Intelligence Project
Lama Ahmad, OpenAI
Markus Anderljung, Centre for Governance of AI
Sociotechnical Challenges in AI Catastrophic Risk Governance
Atoosa Kasirzadeh, Carnegie Mellon University
AI Agents Against Democracy?
Seth Lazar, The Australian National University
Tino Cuéllar, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Resource Rational Contractualism as a Framework for Pluralistic Value Alignment
Sydney Levine, Allen Institute for AI
Seth Lazar, The Australian National University
Joshua Tenenbaum, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Yejin Choi, NVIDIA, University of Washington, Stanford
Experimental Publics: Democracy and the Role of Publics in GenAI Evaluation
Jacob Metcalf, Data & Society
Ranjit Singh, Data & Society
Borhane Blili-Hamelin, AI Risk and Vulnerability Alliance
AI Safety is Sometimes a Model Property: A Conceptual Model to Guide AI Risk Governance Strategy
Deirdre K. Mulligan, University of California, Berkeley
Nik Marda, Mozilla
AI as Normal Technology
Arvind Narayanan, Princeton University
Sayash Kapoor, Princeton University
The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Racially Inclusive Democracy
Spencer Overton, George Washington University
Representative Ranking for Deliberation in the Public Sphere
Manon Revel, Meta FAIR
Smitha Milli, Meta FAIR
Tyler Lu, Meta
Jamelle Watson-Daniels, Meta FAIR
Max Nickel, Meta FAIR
Don’t Panic (Yet): Assessing the Evidence and Discourse Around (Generative) AI and Elections
Felix Simon, Oxford University
Sacha Altay, University of Zurich
Keegan McBride, Oxford University
What Will Remain for People to Do?
Daniel Susskind, King’s College London
Strengthening Democratic Deliberation With AI Mediation
MH Tessler, Google DeepMind
Georgina Evans, Google DeepMind
Michiel Bakker, Google DeepMind
Iason Gabriel, Google DeepMind
Sophie Bridgers, Google DeepMind
Rishub Jain, Google DeepMind
Raphael Koster, Google DeepMind
Verena Rieser, Google DeepMind
Anca Dragan, Google DeepMind
Matthew Botvinick, Google DeepMind
Christopher Summerfield, Oxford University
When is Democracy Over Inferred Preferences Valid?
Luke Thorburn, King’s College London
Karen Ullrich, Meta FAIR
Max Nickel, Meta FAIR
Normative Competence in AI: Toward Sociotechnical Safety by Predicting Sanctions and Aligning With User Preferences
Rakshit Trivedi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Gillian Hadfield, Johns Hopkins University
Dylan Hadfield-Menell, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Alondra Nelson (Institute for Advanced Study) will also participate in the symposium. Additional speakers will be announced soon. Register to attend the “Artificial Intelligence and Democratic Freedoms” event here.