Occasional Paper
In this report, Erica Chenoweth summarizes a December 2024 workshop on the specific issue of AI adoption within democracy movements and offers some key recommendations.
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In recent years, democracy movements have experienced a historic decline in their ability to challenge autocratic governments effectively. This decline is due, at least in part, to the changing technology landscape, which has allowed autocratic governments to monopolize the advantages of breakthrough technologies to strengthen their power. The relatively slow adoption of AI tools by democracy movements may be widening the gulf between these movements and their adversaries—a gap that may grow even larger if movements do not integrate these technologies now. To explore these issues, we convened a workshop in December 2024. This report summarizes the proceedings and offers several recommendations based on the discussion.
Erica Chenoweth is the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard Kennedy School and Director of the Nonviolent Action Lab.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent the positions of the Ash Center or its affiliates.
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