Description
AI for Democracy, or Democracy for AI?
A Mozilla Foundation panel featuring:
Angela Oduor Lungati, Executive Director, Ushahidi
Arnau Monterde, Director of Democratic Innovation, City of Barcelona
Woodrow Hartzog, Professor of Law, Boston University
Claudia Chwalisz, Founder & CEO, DemocracyNext
& moderated by our Executive Director Nabiha Syed.
On Wednesday May 20, 2026, Mozilla Foundation gathered four of the sharpest minds working on AI and democracy for a panel focused on the intersection of democracy and AI.
Executive Director Nabiha Syed opened with a provocation: AI isn't just failing democracy in notable moments, it's actively undermining it. Then she invited the panel to argue back.
Ushahidi's Angela Oduor Lungati, dialing in from Nairobi, made the case that technology is a mirror of society: neither inherently good nor bad, just a question of who builds it and how. Boston University law professor Woody Hartzog took the opposite tack, arguing that AI as currently designed will "enfeeble" democratic institutions like journalism, higher education, and the rule of law. Democracy Next's Claudia Chwalisz pushed everyone to widen the lens beyond elections to citizens' assemblies, sortition, and deliberation. And Arnau Monterde, Director of Democratic Innovation for the City of Barcelona, argued that every layer of the AI stack is a political decision and that knowledge itself belongs to the commons.
Nabiha asked the group to name one use of AI that you would ban tomorrow and another use or deployment of AI that you would love to build. You’ll just have to watch the talk to hear the intriguing answers.
One thread cut through the whole hour: can you really build democratic tools on an anti-democratic stack owned by a handful of companies? Nabiha closed by drawing on Rebecca Solnit and Mozilla's own posture of "defiant optimism" — defiance first, because we're going to need to fight a little.
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