The Algorithmic State? Challenges to Democracy in an Era of Digitalization

Ireland 2030 will be a country awash in artificial intelligence, data analytics, machine learning, and other advanced computing applications whirring away in the background throughout the economy and government. While these emerging technologies offer tremendous benefits, they pose equally serious challenges. More broadly, the continuing development of the information society has been accompanied by increasing economic and social inequalities, an existential sense by some of being left behind, loss of community, and – in the wake of increasingly diverse populations – pernicious growth in systemic racism residing in biased data and analytical models that pervasively underpin decision-making.