AI Systems and the Individual Electoral Decision

Fake news, disinformation campaigns, upload filters or even election recommendation apps are not new phenomena – even in the run-up to elections. The importance of artificial intelligence (AI) for opinion-forming and individual voting decisions is playing an increasingly important role in this context and evokes two opposing reflexes in the debate: on the one hand, its potential raises great expectations; on the other hand, its use triggers numerous fears such as loss of control, abuse of power and manipulation – especially individual opinion-forming.

In the white paper, experts from the working group IT Security, Privacy, Legal and Ethical Framework of the Plattform Lernende Systeme shed light on the opportunities and challenges that the use of AI systems can pose for democracy and on how AI systems can be united and integrated in the architecture of our social democratic coexistence. The focus of the publication is on what AI systems can contribute under which conditions to support the formation of opinion in the course of democratic elections on the one hand and to remedy any problems that may arise in this context on the other.