The autonomy paradox: artificial intelligence and the foundations of political behaviour

Decades of research in political behaviour show that citizens struggle with information, rely on cognitive shortcuts, and face barriers to participation.

Professor Chris Anderson and PhD candidate Elena Pro have co-authored new research in Perspectives on Politics, which discusses the implications behind the increasing use of AI tools to make sense of political information and express views.

To do so, they focus on how citizens engage with AI systems in ways that affect belief formation and political action and develop a framework and research agenda for identifying when AI supports autonomous citizenship, when it substitutes for citizens’ judgment or agency, and why the same systems produce different outcomes across political tasks depending on how citizens use them.

Their paper shows that the deeper problem is not about manipulation but the erosion of the very capacity to know if a political opinion is your own.

Abstract

"Decades of research in political behaviour show that citizens struggle with information, rely on cognitive shortcuts, and face barriers to participation. They are increasingly using AI tools to make sense of political information and express views, while interacting with platform curation systems that shape how views circulate through democratic politics. Although these tools appear suited to address the limits of democratic citizenship, they do more than transmit content. They help interpret information, articulate views, and affect what is prioritised, seen, and circulated. In doing so, these systems shape the formation of political judgments and citizens’ capacity to translate them into action. As a result, they can reduce barriers to participation while weakening the independence of political judgment, or they can support reflective preference formation while constraining citizens’ ability to act on those preferences effectively. We call this tension the autonomy paradox. To make sense of it, we focus on how citizens engage with AI systems in ways that affect belief formation and political action. We develop a framework and research agenda for identifying when AI supports autonomous citizenship, when it substitutes for citizens’ judgment or agency, and why the same systems produce different outcomes across political tasks depending on how citizens use them."