As the Basque Government moves to pass a new Transparency Law this May, it is redefining what transparency means. No longer just about access to information, the law embeds collaborative governance into its core, requiring that decision-making processes be open, traceable, and shaped with others. This piece explores what it looks like to turn participation from a principle into a legal obligation, and what it takes to make participation a structured, accountable part of how policy is made.

Across contexts like India, where author Anirudh Dinesh’s family lives, AI chatbots such as xAI’s Grok are increasingly used not to inform but to generate arguments that reinforce existing political views, creating “generative echo chambers.” Unlike passive social media exposure, users actively prompt AI to validate positions, often producing confident but inaccurate claims that go unchecked. While some research suggests AI can moderate views in neutral dialogue, real-world use skews toward advocacy, compounded by low verification and high trust in outputs. The result is that AI may not just reflect polarization, but actively deepen it, depending on how these systems are designed and used.

States aren’t merely engaged in how America adapts artificial intelligence; they are key to determining how the U.S. can thrive with the technology. This summer, Princeton University’s Center for…

Designing a one-hour course on democratic engagement and AI means confronting genuinely hard questions about representativeness, political framing, and audience, where thoughtful experts disagree, and every choice involves a real tradeoff. Over the past week, we drafted, debated, and cut more than 25,000 words to a working script, informed by over 300 comments from 50 advisors across 24 countries and a room full of democratic theorists in Barcelona. This post explains the three hardest calls we had to make and why we made them.

Dr. Sara Bazoobandi examines how Iran’s doctrine of “knowledge jihad” shaped the development of its digital and AI infrastructure, transforming technology into an instrument of state control. The piece traces how this system, built for surveillance and centralized authority, has also created strategic fragility, offering a cautionary lesson for democracies designing the foundations of AI governance.

In Argentina, the Red de Innovación Local (RIL) experimented with its AI-powered platform, PortalRIL, to shift from fragmented work plans to an inquiry-driven planning process anchored in a “Question Tree.” By surfacing patterns, trade-offs, and synergies across teams, AI helped compress months of coordination into weeks of shared clarity. The result suggests that AI’s real promise is to expand strategic horizons and accelerate collective insight, freeing public servants to focus on judgment, identity, and long-term public value.

As Korea aims to become a top-three global AI power, the government has staked its strategy on “sovereign AI” as both an economic and national security priority. In this reflection, originally published in the Herald Insight Collection, Merve Hickok examines Korea’s multibillion-dollar investment in a national foundation model amid U.S.–China competition and the rise of Open-Source AI, asking whether alternative investments—such as small language models, compute and energy efficiency, and AI governance and evaluation—might better secure Korea’s long-term autonomy and global leadership.

Mapping schools in Uzbekistan and Bhutan revealed how data that appeared complete on paper often missed what mattered on the ground, like distance, access, and everyday conditions. By treating geography as essential, spatial data, participatory collection, and AI analysis reshaped how evidence-informed public investment and policy decisions are made.

As governments and international bodies race to establish guardrails for AI, most of the global agenda still focuses on managing what AI systems produce—their outputs. This article argues that such an approach is incomplete. The real foundations of safe, rights-respecting, and equitable AI lie upstream in how data is collected, governed, shared, and stewarded. Without integrating mature data governance practices, such as data stewardship and data commons, into AI governance, countries will struggle to protect fundamental rights or ensure that AI’s economic and social benefits are distributed fairly. A future-ready AI governance framework must therefore unite input and output governance into a single, coherent system.

Political Watch’s “What Our Representatives Do” tool (QHLD) organizes thousands of congressional initiatives into clear, searchable themes, making political priorities visible, comparable, and actionable. By exposing imbalances like the 198 initiatives on squatting versus just 54 on social housing, QHLD shows how structured, understandable data can reconnect citizens with their representatives. Yet the project also highlights a global challenge for civic tech: limited funding, slow adoption, and the high cost of responsible AI integration. Making democracy legible is possible, but only if we invest in tools designed to share power, not just document it.

When refugees needed language support, Tarjimly turned everyday volunteers into lifelines. In this reflection, CEO Atif Javed traces how the platform evolved from a Facebook Messenger experiment into a global translation network, one now partially powered by AI. His key lesson is that designing for trust means using technology to amplify, not replace, human empathy in moments of crisis.

As headlines warn of “superintelligent AI” threatening human extinction, a new open letter reignites familiar fears. But beneath the apocalyptic rhetoric lies a deeper problem. The narrative around artificial superintelligence, long embraced by Big Tech, diverts attention from the real and immediate challenges of AI and how our democratic institutions can address them.

Hamburg uses AI to turn citizen feedback into urban policy, Boston showcases tools that improve public trust, and tribal nations are piloting AI for governance while protecting sovereignty. New York b

As the Basque Government moves to pass a new Transparency Law this May, it is redefining what transparency means. No longer just about access to information, the law embeds collaborative governance in...

Across contexts like India, where author Anirudh Dinesh’s family lives, AI chatbots such as xAI’s Grok are increasingly used not to inform but to generate arguments that reinforce existing political v...

Designing a one-hour course on democratic engagement and AI means confronting genuinely hard questions about representativeness, political framing, and audience, where thoughtful experts disagree, and...

Dr. Sara Bazoobandi examines how Iran’s doctrine of “knowledge jihad” shaped the development of its digital and AI infrastructure, transforming technology into an instrument of state control. The piec...

As Korea aims to become a top-three global AI power, the government has staked its strategy on “sovereign AI” as both an economic and national security priority. In this reflection, originally publish...

Mapping schools in Uzbekistan and Bhutan revealed how data that appeared complete on paper often missed what mattered on the ground, like distance, access, and everyday conditions. By treating geograp...

As governments and international bodies race to establish guardrails for AI, most of the global agenda still focuses on managing what AI systems produce—their outputs. This article argues that such an...

Political Watch’s “What Our Representatives Do” tool (QHLD) organizes thousands of congressional initiatives into clear, searchable themes, making political priorities visible, comparable, and actiona...