Reboot: AI and the Race to Save Democracy

A blueprint for rescuing our fragile democracy by harnessing AI

Democracy is in retreat at home and abroad. Our institutions and our politics are more broken than ever. At this delicate moment, artificial intelligence has burst onto the scene, a powerful technology that holds as much potential to bolster democracy as to harm it. But we have stopped treating democracy as a solvable problem. We have built extraordinary tools but are not yet using them where they are needed most: to forge institutions that work better for people.

Many warn that AI will accelerate authoritarianism. In Reboot, Beth Simone Noveck makes a different case. Drawing on decades of work building technology and working inside government, from the White House to 10 Downing Street, she shows how democratic institutions can deliberately design, govern, and invest in AI to strengthen democracy rather than undermine it.

Noveck takes readers inside real-world efforts already under way, from European cities engaging residents in policymaking to Latin American legislatures drafting stronger laws and U.S. states transforming how they deliver public services, revealing what democratic AI looks like in practice and what it takes to make it work at scale.

We stand at an inflection point. Will governments and companies use AI to tighten their grip on power, or to help institutions listen more closely, decide more wisely, and act more effectively? Noveck offers a bold and practical playbook for tipping the balance in favor of democracy.

Beth Simone Noveck is a professor and director of the Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University. She leads The Governance Lab and its InnovateUS initiative. Former U.S. deputy chief technology officer and the first state chief AI strategist, she founded AI for Impact, which builds democratic AI with communities. She is the author of Solving Public Problems: A Practical Guide to Fix Our Government and Change Our World and writes on AI and democracy at rebootdemocracy.ai.