Democracy Innovators Podcast · democracyinnovators.com

Marco Cappato & Francesco Vecchi discuss how AI can empower democracy

·55 min·5 clips

Marco Cappato exposes how almost all AI investment ignores citizen empowerment, calling for AI as a public service.

A-Humans is political, but not an electoral party. Cappato describes it as a directly European movement of popular initiative, open to members across Europe without forcing everything through national organizations. His diagnosis is institutional. Democracy still works mostly at the national level, while many problems move across borders, layers of government, and long time horizons. Elections matter, but in this account they lean too hard toward short term consensus to carry every democratic need on their own. The proposed answer is more civic participation. European citizens initiatives, plus national, regional, and local tools, give people ways to act politically without turning the campaign into a party. AI enters through public power. Cappato argues that artificial intelligence should help citizens use democratic rights, social rights, civic participation, and public goods. The state still has a job. When signatures carry formal legal value for petitions, referendums, or ballots, the state can authenticate and certify the process. Vecchi slows the idea down in a useful way. He says the ask is not simply for the European Union or another public actor to build a chatbot and hand it to citizens. Public institutions have limits. Platforms can be expensive, talent heavy, and weaker than what private actors already know how to build. His better example is regulatory infrastructure. The European digital wallet and the EIDAS framework show how public authority can set rules and guidelines for trusted digital identity services. That changes the role of government. It can define conditions for certification, trust, and access without trying to compete directly with technology companies. The campaign is still experimental: a Discord community, a Decidim page, and Mentimeter-style feedback for European Commission consultations. The unfinished method is part of the point. Existing participation channels are not working well enough, so the campaign treats experimentation as part of building the fight.

As heard by us

A clear case for citizen-led democracy, with AI kept under public rules.

Marco Cappato and Francesco Vecchi frame A-Humans as a case for a wider democracy, one that reaches past national borders and does not wait for the next election cycle.

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Why you'd press play

You want a calm, serious take on citizen-led democracy and AI in public life.

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