Algocracy: Will AI Fix Democracy or Replace It?

In this episode of AI First with Adam and Andy, hosts Adam Brotman and Andy Sack explore a recent New York Times opinion piece by Eric Schmidt and Andrew Sirota titled “Use AI to Reinvigorate Democracy, Not Replace It.” The article highlights examples from Albania and Taiwan, showing how governments are already using AI to reduce corruption, analyze constituent feedback, and create more responsive policies.

Adam and Andy reflect on the larger question behind these stories. AI can help leaders synthesize information, listen to the public more effectively, and make smarter decisions faster. But turning decision-making over to the algorithm risks accountability, trust, and democratic values. They also discuss why governments need AI literacy, training, and communities of practice to ensure these tools are used in ways that strengthen institutions rather than weaken them.

A thoughtful look at how AI could shape the future of governance.

What is AI First with Adam and Andy?

AI First with Adam and Andy: Inspiring Business Leaders to Make AI First Moves is a dynamic podcast focused on the unprecedented potential of AI and how business leaders can harness it to transform their companies. Each episode dives into real-world examples of AI deployments, the "holy shit" moments where AI changes everything, and the steps leaders need to take to stay ahead. It’s bold, actionable, and emphasizes the exponential acceleration of AI, inspiring CEOs to make AI-first moves before they fall behind.

Andy Sack (00:00)
I worry that there just isn't enough dialogue, conversation, and thoughtfulness in utilizing AI to support democracy. Rather, it's just the race is on. The capitalist race

is on and everyone's just hurtling forward to AGI and, and there's going to be roadkill and, and one of the roadkill very well may be democracy,

This is AI First with Adam and Andy, the show that takes you straight to the front lines of AI innovation and business. I'm Andy Sack, and alongside my co-host, Adam Brotman, each episode we bring you candid conversations with business leaders, transforming their businesses with AI. No fluff, just real talk, actionable use cases and insights for you.

Adam Brotman (00:35)
Thank you.

Andy Sack (01:00)
Good morning, Adam. ⁓

Adam Brotman (01:02)
Good morning,

Andy.

Andy Sack (01:03)
Today we're going to do something a little different. This is one of our mini episodes. It's November 11, 2025, Tuesday. And there was an article in the New York Times titled, Use AI to Reinvigorate Democracy, Not Replace It. It's an opinion piece by Eric Schmidt and Andrew Sirota. And we read it, and it's basically about AI and

the future of democracy. And we're going to talk about that today. So we both read the article. We encourage you to read the article. That's why I gave the date. It's an excellent article that talks about one. There were two instances that the article references. One is how Albania is using

AI to allocate approximately a billion dollars of its spend to vendors. And because the country is rife with corruption, they have defaulted and they're going to use AI to select vendors and allocate that billion dollars of spend.

and they're using AI instead of the corrupt vehicles. So that's one instance. And the other piece in the article is they reference Taiwan as an example, a positive example, as to how Taiwan dealt with when Uber came in, they used AI to actually get more input from constituents and had AI ⁓

Adam Brotman (02:11)
you

you

Andy Sack (02:33)
assess those, that input in order to form a better policy that was done by the government. so the article uses Taiwan as a living example and says that we need to use ⁓ more approaches like that to actually extend democracy from what it is today, which is largely broken around the world.

So we wanted to talk about that today.

Adam Brotman (03:00)
Yeah, I thought you have to, the article is so provocative because if you, if you are emotional about AI, which I think a lot of people are like, they're either like emotionally

sort of hyped about it, or they're emotionally scared of it or skeptical of it. But if you, you, so when you think about like, should we turn our government over to AI, what's called algoracy whatever is a term, meaning like, the algorithms rule. There's actually, this is actually a really legitimate question. But the question, what Eric Schmidt said was, it's not, he does not suggest we turn over democracy to the algorithm.

but that we allow the people that are running our countries be better leaders because of the algorithm. And I thought that that distinction, if you're emotional, you won't see it. if you're unemotional, you'd be like, and I'm not saying I'm not emotional, but I'm saying like, if you can just breathe and say, okay, break it down, like these new neural net AI algorithms or models, which is what all the hype and rage is about, they are

incredibly good at certain things. They're not good at everything. They're bad at certain things, but they're incredibly good at a lot of things. And one of the things they're good at is taking all sorts of data, structured and unstructured, and synthesizing it and basically inferring and deducing really good answers and summaries to help a human make a decision and make a better decision faster.

And we talk about that all the time, Andy, you and I were like, if you know how to use these and you are smart and responsible, how to use these as a business leader, as an individual contributor in the business world, it will in general, besides making you more productive, it can also allow you to make better decisions faster, which is the thing we're most excited about. So why wouldn't you want your government leaders to make better decisions faster? Now you might worry like, well, the AI doesn't have our value system. It's biased.

potentially rogue in certain cases in the future. So those are reasons to be skeptical and be like, I don't want that algorithm anywhere near my leaders. I sort of, agree with Eric Schmidt that, and I'm curious to get your thoughts Andy, I agree with the fundamental premise of his piece, which is if used responsibly and intelligently by humans, they will allow the human leaders to be more effective and make smarter decisions. The example he gives was in Taiwan.

they were wrestling with a policy over like Uber and like, they allow Uber as an Uber like services compared to taxis? And they were able to use AI to, think effectively synthesize, you know, hundreds of thousands of citizens comments and thoughts on it so they can help the leaders craft a better policy. I actually, but they weren't turning the decision over to the AI as Eric Schmidt and his co-author put it in the article.

AIs aren't yet able, if maybe ever, to really have the same value systems we have. so, particularly when it comes to government, values are really important, but also so is being smart and listening to your constituency and analyzing much of data and making good policy decisions for the whole country, irrespective of your political beliefs. for all those reasons, it was cool to see the same things we've been thinking about and talking about in the business realm.

apply to government and you know, so in that net, thought it was an interesting article. actually agree that like, I would love to know that my leaders are using this tool to make more effective decisions, but not turning over the decisions to the tool. And what were your thoughts?

Andy Sack (06:46)
Yeah, I I agree. I I think that the premise of the article is that there's a window of time right now that democracy needs to evolve, and it needs to evolve to include AI. And one choice is.

give over decision making, just like Albania did to the AI in which it's Algarisi, versus evolve the very structure of AI to help enable democracy. Because the risk of Algarisi is that

the algorithm will make decisions and you'll still have the populace who doesn't feel that they have a voice, that they haven't been heard and there can be dissent and dissatisfaction and they highlight historical instances which is what gave rise to democracy in the first place. I agree with the article and I think it's...

idealistic, the practical skeptic in me says AI is moving at such a fast pace and

democracy everywhere, but democracy in the United States is so dysfunctional right now that the default is like, oh, let's go toward an authoritarian regime.

I worry that there just isn't enough dialogue, conversation, and thoughtfulness in utilizing AI to support democracy. Rather, it's just the race is on. The capitalist race

is on and everyone's just hurtling forward to AGI and, and there's going to be roadkill and, and one of the roadkill very well may be democracy,

particularly when you include sort of the, the surveillance state that's being advocated by Larry Ellison and others. makes AI makes surveillance at such a lowers the cost of surveillance.

And so I worry that that AI may actually be the death knell of democracy.

Adam Brotman (08:44)
Yeah, you've been worried about that for a while.

Andy Sack (08:47)
Yeah.

Yeah, so I liked the article, and I agree with its thesis. just don't see nearly enough dialogue about how to use AI. That was the first time I had read about the example of Taiwan and Uber, and I thought it was an excellent example. It's just that's nowhere in the discourse in the United States today.

Adam Brotman (08:53)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. You bring up an interesting point to kind of wrap on a little like, I wonder if, David Sachs and his office and that team are, and I'm guessing they might be working on some stuff that's similar to what we do in our boot camps and in our playbook, where are they, are they creating academies and facilitation?

capabilities and communities of practice amongst government agencies around AI. they, I mean, it's like, we always advocate for companies, you know, you're not creating an AI council to hand off the AI transformation of the company to you. You're creating a counselor task force to be a facilitator to increase the largest amount of surface area people in the company that know how to use AI effectively. Like we should be doing that in our government.

Like we should be like not, you know, basically allowing every agency to be like, okay, what tool should they be using? They apparently now all these government agencies have access to the frontier models, perhaps to people free. Cause I think all the labs, as I understand it, are all sort of giving it away to the government, which is sort of funny because I keep, you know, it's good, it's good policy, but they're probably also trying to curry favor, but whatever. Like the point at the end of the day, these labs are giving away this stuff to schools and government, which is a good thing.

And, but they can't just give it to them without, you know, there's no training, right? The labs aren't teaching people how to use it. They're not educating. I they kind of are. OpenAI, I take it back, OpenAI did a nice job recently. You and I were looking at this. They've created sort of an online academy, which is good, but it needs facilitation. It needs community of practice. I sure hope our government is doing that now because they seem to be, you know, regardless of what

political side of the aisle you're on. the current administration in the AI realm is not dumb about AI. They, know, forget about policy for a second. They're they're, they're tuned in to like what's going on. And I sure hope they're facilitating that across all these agencies to the point of the article. Cause at a minimum, it's an incredibly, incredibly powerful tool to helping you make better decisions faster. Not, not taking the decision away from you.

to the point you just made about like, so that people can't wonder like, well, who's accountable for this decision? Are you listening to us? What's my appeal? Those are good things in democracy. But okay, like if the tool can help you synthesize huge amounts of data, listen to your constituency better, help you make more effective decisions as a government leader, like that's just goodness, I think.

Andy Sack (11:46)
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out and we start to see more dialogue about AI supporting democracy as opposed to us just hurling towards algorithm.

Adam Brotman (12:01)
Good topic,

Andy Sack (12:02)
Yeah, great. Thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed a slightly different episode from us.

Thanks to the audience for listening to AI First with Adam and Andy. For more resources on how to become AI First, you can visit our website, forum3.com, download case studies, research briefing, and executive summaries, and join our email list. We also invite you to connect with our AI First community, a curated hub and network for leaders turning AI hype into action. We truly believe you can't over invest in your AI learning. Onward.