AI for the People: A Federal Mandate for Inclusive Engagement
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not just transforming economies and industries; it holds the key to revolutionizing public engagement with the federal government. The potential for AI to bridge communication gaps, streamline feedback, and foster inclusion is immense, yet unrealized.
Following on the heels of a sweeping AI executive order earlier this week, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has followed up with 26 pages of proposed policy guidance for federal departments and agencies on what they need to do to implement the executive order. Front and center in the guidance is the requirement for each agency to appoint a Chief AI Officer (CAIO) whose primary responsibility is “coordination, innovation, and risk management” of their agency’s uses of artificial intelligence.
The establishment of a senior AI role in every department underscores the importance of technology in governance. However, the role of the CAIOs should be explicitly linked to innovating public engagement through AI, ensuring that every voice is heard and accounted for in the policymaking process.
In order to take advantage of AI’s unmatched potential to analyze public sentiment, manage feedback, and scale engagement across diverse demographics, OMB’s guidance must evolve to explicitly require federal agencies to implement AI solutions that facilitate and enhance public consultations.
While the proposed guidance calls for “consult[ing] affected groups, including underserved communities, in the design, development and use of the AI, and use [of] such feedback to inform agency decision-making,” the guidance calls for doing so by means of antiquated methods, including:
- User testing
- Soliciting comments via the Federal Register
- Customer feedback
- Public hearings, or meetings, such as listening sessions, or
- Any other transparent process
Noticeably absent is any injunction to take advantage of AI to make such consultations easier, faster and more equitable than the above methods.
As if to underscore the point that OMB is not taking advantage of new technology to foster more democratic decision making, the link to give comments on https://ai.gov/input is still “coming soon.”
While traditional methods of public participation are valuable, they are often limited by scale, speed, and accessibility. People might talk but it is very difficult for either the agency or the public to hear them because of the volume of comments.
Integrating AI can overcome these limitations, offering real-time analysis and broader inclusivity, particularly for underrepresented communities.
The guidance should be amended to require that the CAIO consults regularly with the public and use AI to make those consultations more effective and equitable.
There is a wide array of tools already in use by other governments. Over 500 governments use the Citizen Lab platform, which incorporates AI to cluster, group and organize public comments. AI is much faster than humans at making sense of large quantities of text and can automate the process of summarizing what people are saying, classifying submissions by topic and sorting them into categories to make it easier for governments and the public to read.
Your Priorities, a free, open source tool for public engagement from Citizens Foundation and used in thousands of online engagements globally, uses AI to scan incoming postings for toxicity. AI automates the process of spotting offensive speech that violates terms of service and community norms, bringing such language to the attention of moderators and reducing the cost of organizing engagements. Your Priorities uses AI to offer a “chatbot” so that the public and government organizers can get answers to questions such as “show me all the comments on Topic X” or “summarize the best comments on Topic Y.”
Source: Citizens Foundation
At MIT, Deb Roy’s Cortico uses machine learning to synthesize comments in live, face-to-face discussions. Remesh leverages artificial intelligence to rapidly make sense of answers to live questions in online sessions, making it possible to extract insights even from spoken conversations such as with communities that are low literacy.
AI translation tools like Facebook’s open source SeamlessM4T make it possible to translate writing into 100 languages and speech into 35 languages, creating avenues for non-native English speakers to participate in conversations on a level playing field.
If OMB amends the guidance to mandate that federal agencies use AI to enable broader, deeper, more meaningful and equitable engagement, innovators will produce even more such tools and agencies will learn how to use them.
Instead of telling agencies, as the guidance does, that they only have to engage “to the extent practicable,” OMB’s guidance should embrace the use of artificial intelligence to foster equitable engagement. It is time for federal agencies to lead by example, leveraging AI to ensure that participatory democracy is not just a principle but a daily practice.
Beth Simone Noveck is a professor at Northeastern University, where she directs the Burnes Center for Social Change and its partner projects, the GovLab, and InnovateUS. She is Core Faculty at the Institute for Experiential AI and School of Law, and in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities, the College of Arts, Design, and Media, the College of Engineering, and affiliated faculty at the Khoury College of Computer Sciences. Beth’s work focuses on using AI to reimagine participatory democracy and strengthen governance, and she has spent her career helping institutions incorporate more participatory and open ways of working.
