Join us on March 20 at 5 p.m. ET for a conversation with Ed Bice, CEO of Meedan and 2024 Skoll Award winner. We'll explore how AI-powered tools like Meedan's "Check" platform and SynDy framework are combating misinformation across 53 countries, particularly as major platforms scale back fact-checking efforts. Learn how these innovations are protecting democratic processes in our increasingly complex information ecosystem.

On February 11, 2025, The Governance Lab (The GovLab) and Urban AI co-hosted an official side event of the Paris AI Action Summit, titled "Aligning Urban AI and Global AI Governance." Held in collaboration with Mouvement des Entreprises de France (MEDEF), Open Data France, DemocracyNext, and UN-Habitat, the event brought together policymakers, researchers, and city representatives to discuss how urban AI initiatives can align with broader governance frameworks to ensure responsible and inclusive AI deployment. 

To support continued transparency and accountability in government AI use, the Federation of American Scientists has written a letter urging OMB to maintain its detailed guidance on AI inventories. Signed by 16 organizations, the letter argues that sustained transparency is crucial to ensuring responsible AI governance, fostering public trust, and enabling industry innovation.

In the news this week: Beth Simone Noveck raises concerns about President Trump's nominee to lead the Office of Science and Technology Policy, arguing the nomination reveals a national AI strategy lacking vision beyond deregulation and failing to address AI's role in government modernization. In the UK, AI assistants are helping to provide customized educational courses for incarcerated individuals, potentially addressing skills shortages and improving job prospects for ex-offenders. Technologist Audrey Tang suggests that humor may be key to better AI governance, exploring how AI can enable citizen participation and deliberation while preserving human-centered public service. Harvard Kennedy’s Ash Center published recommendations for how AI can support pro-democracy movements, calling on the civic tech community to connect AI developers with activists and create ethical guidelines and training for integrating AI into democracy work. Read more in this week’s AI News That Caught Our Eye.

Join the Internet Archive on Thursday, March 13 for a thought-provoking discussion on Copyright, AI, and Great Power Competition, a new paper by Joshua Levine and Tim Hwang. The piece explores how different nations approach AI policy and copyright regulation, and also what’s at stake in the battle for technological dominance.

While others work to dismantle government, we are investing in building the capacity and skills of public professionals. Read the InnovateUS March newsletter with news of free workshops on AI and administrative burden reduction, homelessness solutions, climate resilience, and digital transformation. The month also introduces "Innovamos," a Spanish-language series, and continues the "AI for Literacy Achievement" program—all sessions include certificates of completion and post-event recordings available on demand.

Trump's pick to lead OSTP professed American AI leadership at his confirmation hearing while ignoring the dismantling of the very scientific institutions that sustain it. With no vision beyond deregulation and no defense of research funding, he failed to address—and Senators failed to ask—about the role of AI in modernizing government or the growing influence of Elon Musk in shaping federal AI policy.

AI is part of the rationale behind the DOGE-led mass layoffs in the federal government, as well as recent job cuts by tech firms. Through collective action, workers are showing that AI's impact isn't predetermined by technology – it can be shaped through worker power.

McKinsey explores the rise of AI in the workplace while Pew finds that half of workers (52%) say they’re worried about AI at work and Dane Gambrell argues that AI is being used as an excuse for mass layoffs in the federal government. According to OpenAI, California, Virginia, New Jersey, and New York lead in student AI adoption. Governor Newsom announces "Engaged California," an AI-enabled digital democracy initiative that will collect ideas from residents about how the state can support those impacted by the LA wildfires. A paper from The GovLab examines AI's potential to transform evidence-based policymaking. Read more in this week's AI News That Caught Our Eye.

A workshop series shows how AI tools are helping to transform literacy education. AI tools have a power potential to democratize quality education by providing personalized learning experiences, multilingual support and culturally responsive content, and other resources that would otherwise be unavailable to students.

Join us in-person or online on Thursday, February 27 at 4 p.m. ET for a live conversation. https://rebootdemocracy.ai/events about the "Habermas Machine" and new research from Google Deep Mind showing that AI can help groups find common ground on controversial issues. Their AI system proved more effective than human mediators at generating consensus statements while successfully preserving minority viewpoints. While this research demonstrates AI's potential to make democratic deliberation more efficient and fair and foster consensus building, it also raises questions about whether academic focus on deliberation itself, rather than practical problem-solving, best serves public needs.

With over 70 national elections held in 2024, concerns around genAI’s potential to disrupt democratic integrity were at an all-time high. A new report challenges the assumption that genAI’s impact is solely negative, revealing a more complex landscape where risks coexist with opportunities for democratic innovation.

This week in the news: A new report examines the promises and pitfalls of AI in 2024's global elections, highlighting how GenAI can both enhance political engagement and amplify disinformation. Oregon State Government sets a democratic precedent with its 74-point AI Action Plan emphasizing human oversight and public accountability. The Kerala High Court makes waves by incorporating AI into judicial decision-making, while cities in China are using Deep Seek to automate administrative processes. Alondra Nelson's influential Elysée Palace speech rejects the notion that AI should prioritize efficiency over democratic values and human rights. Read more in this week's AI News That Caught Our Eye.

The Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) currently funds multiyear technology projects to help agencies improve their service delivery. However, many agencies abdicate responsibility for project outcomes to vendors, lacking the internal leadership and project development teams necessary to apply a product model approach focused on user needs, starting small, learning what works, and making adjustments as needed. 

Why responsible data stewardship could help addressing today’s pressing environmental challenges resulting from artificial intelligence and other data-related technologies.

Today, we're excited to announce the launch of the newly updated AI Localism Repository—a curated resource designed to help local governments, researchers, and citizens understand how AI is being governed at the state, city, or community level.

This week, The GovLab and the Burnes Center for Social Change published two new resources aimed at leveraging the power of artificial intelligence and collective intelligence to tackle pressing public challenges. 

In the Open Data Policy Lab's new report, the team provides a framework and recommendations to support open data providers and other interested parties in making open data “ready” for generative AI.

On April 17, 2024, during AI Week, The GovLab and UrbanAI hosted a webinar on AI localism, titled "Empowering Communities through Digital Self-Determination". The session aimed at investigating how AI governance can be localized to better serve community-specific needs.

Hannah Garden-Monheit, Director of the Office of Policy Planning of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) talks with Seth Harris on the Power at Work Blog about the FTC's new rule banning almost all non-compete agreements in employment relationships. 

To increase civic trust, we need to know what we mean by it and how to measure it, which turns out to be a challenging exercise. Toward that end, The GovLab at New York University and the New York Civic Engagement Commission joined forces to catalogue and identify methodologies to quantify and understand the nuances of civic trust. 

From 29 to 31 January 2024, UNICEF and UNHCR and The Governance Lab at New York University hosted three 90-minute webinars on ways they can support the well-being of children through data, highlighting the ways development and humanitarian practitioners around the world can reinforce data responsibility principles and practices in their daily work with and for children.

Join us for a book talk with Urs Gasser as he delves into his latest work, "Guardrails." In this talk, Gasser will explore the ways in which societal norms shape our decision-making processes in an era saturated with data and dominated by rapidly advancing technologies like artificial intelligence.