Chapter 3: Power in AI and public policy

Overview & Synopsis

This contribution scrutinizes how AI is related to power, how power theory can contribute to the debate about public sector AI, and whether new concepts of power are needed to study AI. Based on the assumption that the current public debate about AI is a power struggle about who gets to set the rules for future societal development, this chapter draws from the rich legacy of theories of power and domination and develops a systematization of different conceptions of power that encompasses various ontological and dimensional distinctions of power, carving out their analytical foci, and related power struggles. The remainder of the argument scrutinizes how these conceptions of power relate to dominant discourses about the power of AI in public policy: the use of AI in public policy and its power implications, recent initiatives to regulate AI, and AI-triggered systemic criticism and propositions for new social orders and utopias.