Algorithmic Governance

Algorithmic Governance was a 2019 year-long research project exploring futures of democracy by AI, moral philosophies of representation, and complicating questions. The work explored what might come to pass if artificial intelligence guided policy development and democratic representation. It was housed within San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ yearlong YBCA Fellowship that brought together Bay Area leaders, philosophers, artists, and technologists in exploring ways to spark community action and vision for an evolving future of political power. It culminated in an immersive video installation that debuted at the YBCA space for thousands of visitors to engage with.

In a staged living room, a TV plays a loop of news clips covering hypothetical implications while viewers vote on the model’s optimization criteria. The work preceded mainstream discussion of decentralized autonomous organizations, and sought to be neither critical nor endorsing, simply inviting reflections of how the philosophy flows for human and non-human policy decision making. Hundreds of citizens engaged with it, filling out ballots to optimize the algorithm: Who designs the guiding logic, what are its inputs, what is it optimizing for?

  • The living room scene is staged as a home on election night. Participants wandered through to sit, watch the fictional newsreels from the future, and slowly realize that all the artifacts and the video were telling a story of a world governed by algorithm.

  • Guests filled out ballots to "vote" on the ethical philosophical models and specific fictional candidates, and to optimize the algorithm: Who designs the guiding logic, what are its inputs, what is it optimizing for?

  • Details set the scene on election night, 3022, from a calendar to party supplies.