Beth Noveck: "We can enter the golden age of democratic participation"

Beth Noveck (New Jersey, USA, 1971) makes it clear in each of her answers that she refuses to fall into defeatism. She offers solutions, gives examples of success, and argues that AI can help improve the functioning of institutions. And she knows what she's talking about, not only because she is an expert in how to use technology to make governments more open, but because she knows institutions from the inside: she was the first Chief Technology Officer of the United States during the administration of Barack Obama. She visits Barcelona to sponsor the presentation of the Pompeu Fabra University's 2026-2037 Strategy.

Give us some good news.

— My students used AI to locate all New Jersey children eligible for free school meals who were not properly identified in the system. There are thousands of children who, thanks to this, are receiving assistance.

Other cases come to me.

— Hello.

A woman who spent five months in prison. Easy AI-based recognition mistakenly identified her as someone else. 

— AI is an opportunity and a threat. We need to have training, know how to use it, but if we only worry we are not talking about all that we can do well with these tools. 

"I have a dream", said Obama. He knows his administration well.

— I was the first Chief Technology Officer of the United States under his administration. And founder of the White House open government initiative.

What surprised her?

— We have a saying in English: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence. 

They were incompetent…

— No, but sometimes there are changes that we think don't happen because people are bad and don't want to, and they simply don't know about them. AI is changing how we should do citizen participation. 

How does it change it?

— Making it easier for citizens to speak does not mean that institutions will listen. AI is exciting because institutions can listen. 

A good example of listening?

— In Hamburg, they have created a tool with which they analyze what citizens say. And what used to be a months-long job is now almost in real-time, and you can act accordingly. All urban planning decisions are being made with citizen participation.

And the process doesn't get longer?

— No, that's why I think we can be entering a golden age of democratic participation if we learn to do it well. 

Can AI in private hands be democratic?

— Barcelona is the global center for what is called public AI, with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center. There are different models, but the key is to treat it as basic infrastructure.

So...

— Like electricity or water. What is important is that they are under public control. I see a lot of concern in Europe about whether someone from Silicon Valley controls them. 

Shouldn't we worry?

— Is it not better if someone in Brussels, Paris or Madrid is only interested in pushing advertising on me with AI. It must be regulated as a public good. 

Should algorithms be public?

— Yes, but the model changes when more data is added. It has to be a continuous process of transparency and testing. And in the case of AI, the problem, moreover, is that we don't know how it works.

We don't know?

— It is not explainable why ChatGPT, when I ask it for a poem, writes one on Monday and another on Tuesday. But we need transparency and regulation to know how an algorithm is used. 

But how can we ensure it is used well if we don't even understand how it works?

— We must differentiate two things: recognition of past patterns and future predictions.

Let's see...

— Machine learning is about recognizing large patterns in data. It's not much of a mystery. You can analyze the problems of the last 15 years to see where students particularly struggle. AI is very good at this. 

What is controversial, therefore, is to make predictions.

— The future is not perfectly predictable. You could have all the data in the world and still not know if you'll be run over by a bus tomorrow. This is where we need to be careful and learn when we can trust AI. But now, since we don't have education on this, we mix everything up.

We talk about AI to improve institutions at a time when it seems that institutions have stopped mattering to many people. 

— Because they don't know what they are doing. They say politics is Hollywood for ugly people. 

I don't know if I understand...

— It's the sport of politics. People like the spectacularity of reproaches, the fight to win or lose elections. But we don't talk about what happens the next day, and as a result, people don't care. Trump can come out and say he's getting rid of thousands of public jobs and people vote for him. But I see many people starting to say: wait, what am I exactly losing? Maybe I'm optimistic, but I think this deconstruction can serve to make people recognize that a managed government is an important thing. 

How can a country go from Obama to Trump?

— It is not a break from one place to another. There is a connection with institutions that are not effective in solving problems, and this has nothing to do with right or left. We must focus on the work of governance that improves people's lives. And AI, well used, is a great help.