Let the Public Govern AI

Recent reporting on Meta’s internal AI guidelines serves as a stark reminder that the rules governing AI behaviors are frequently decided by a small group of the same people, behind closed doors. The sheer scale of work every AI company grapples with, from determining ethics and mapping acceptable behaviors to enforcing content policies, affects millions of people through processes that the public has no visibility into.

The truth is that these silos are constantly happening across the industry.

Tech policy, particularly AI policy, is often so complex and evolves so rapidly that everyday perspectives are not easily captured. As consumers, we’ve grown accustomed to a system where the most important decisions about technology governance happen in exclusive settings.

But what if we flipped the script? What if users helped create the rules?

The reality is that tech companies wield unprecedented power over our social interactions, information ecosystems, and personal data. Yet the governance of these systems has traditionally remained opaque, and the algorithms that drive these platforms are equally as difficult for the public to understand.

While individual users may struggle to understand the nuances of technical systems, deliberative input offers companies a powerful tool to bridge this gap, leveraging the wisdom of diverse groups to surface insights and questions that internal teams, working in isolation, may miss.

This is the promise of deliberative democracy: inviting communities of all backgrounds to engage in meaningful, informed discussion about how the systems that affect them are built and governed. Deliberative democracy has been utilized in local and national governments for decades to address a range of issues from electoral reform to abortion policy.