How Will AI Reshape Politics? New Volume Co-Edited by CSMAP’s Joshua Tucker Explores the Stakes

As artificial intelligence reshapes political campaigns, public administration, national security, public opinion, and democracy, a new volume co-edited by CSMAP co-Director Joshua Tucker offers a timely, wide-ranging analysis of what AI may mean for politics and for the field of political science.

The volume, Artificial Intelligence, Politics, and Political Science, will be published by Cambridge University Press later this year. However, given the fast-changing nature of the subject matter, the draft of the book has been made available publicly, in advance of publication, giving policymakers, scholars, journalists, and the broader public early access. The volume represents the report of the Presidential Task Force on AI, Politics, and Political Science of the American Political Science Association, co-chaired by Joshua Tucker and Nathaniel Persily. 

The volume brings together more than 50 political scientists and scholars, writing on topics that include democracy, elections, public opinion, race and gender, the labor market, national security, public-sector governance, political theory, research methods, and teaching.

This volume is a successor to Persily and Tucker’s earlier volume, Social Media and Democracy: The State of the Field and Prospects for Reform, published in 2020, also by Cambridge University Press. This newest volume considers the intersection and interaction of social media and AI, but it goes well beyond the topics relating to the information ecosystem and democracy. The task force authors explore AI’s impact on all kinds of political phenomena, from national security to the labor market to public opinion.     

“Our experience studying social media has helped prepare us to analyze the political implications of this newest technology,” Tucker said. “However, the impact of AI – both on society and on the profession of political science has the potential to be much more dramatic. Not only will political scientists be exploring the shifts in politics due to AI, but they will be increasingly using AI as a tool to analyze these political phenomena.”  

The editors express both “anxiety and excitement” regarding the impact of AI on politics and political science.  Cautioning that we are at an early stage in evaluating the implications of this  technology for political actors and those who study them, the volume represents a clarion call for political scientists to join in the efforts to steer the technology toward socially productive ends. While the development of AI has long been considered primarily the purview of computer scientists, the volume makes the case that considerations of AI’s political implications deserve to be front and center as the technology advances. Moreover, with chapters on political science methodology and teaching, the volume also seeks to provide guidance on questions that professors of political science need to be asking – and answering – to deal with the AI revolution.