With the massive use of Fake News and the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the general public is aware that AI can harm democratic processes. But on its bright side, can machine learning help us to better understand and improve democracy?

The AI & Democracy track explores the challenges and opportunities that lie at the intersection of politics, law, and machine learning – beyond Fake News and Cambridge Analytica. Open Government Initiatives have opened access to vast amounts of data that political scientists, lawmakers, legal experts, journalists, and data scientists exploit to gain insights into political and legal processes.

The machine learning toolset of models and algorithms enables the processing of high-dimensional data available in unprecedented fashion. In particular, the AI & Democracy track investigates the extent to which decisions of different actors and institutions in the democratic system, from voters to judges, can be predicted. In the spirit of Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight data-driven statistical analysis of politics, we will explore how computational methods are being applied in the political and legal world and discuss whether they strengthen or weaken democracy.