Module Check: Democracy and Power
This module has traced how AI is reshaping the information environment that democratic society depends on, enabling surveillance at scales previously impossible, introducing new vectors for electoral manipulation, concentrating power in new ways, challenging existing legal frameworks, and generating new demands for civic resilience. Before you leave this module, this lesson consolidates the key vocabulary, tests your conceptual understanding across the full arc of the content, and asks you to synthesize what you have learned into your own analytical position.
Flashcards — click each card to reveal the answer
Module Check Questions
A social media company's recommendation algorithm is trained to maximize weekly active usage. Over time, researchers find that users who begin watching political content are progressively shown more extreme versions of that content in their autoplay queues, even though the company has no explicit policy promoting extreme content. Which concept from this module best explains this pattern?
A government requires all residents to participate in a national AI social scoring system that assigns each person a civic score based on their social media activity, purchase history, and court records. High scorers receive benefits; low scorers face travel restrictions. Which of the following best describes the primary democratic concern with this system?
A political campaign uses an AI system to generate 500,000 individually personalized text messages to registered voters in a swing district, each formulated to appeal to the specific recipient's inferred personality profile. The messages contain no false information. Which concern from this module most directly applies?
A researcher analyzing an AI bail risk assessment tool finds it has the same overall accuracy rate for Black and white defendants, but that its errors are asymmetric: it over-predicts risk for Black defendants (false positives) and under-predicts risk for white defendants (false negatives). Which legal concept applies, and what is the practical harm?
Which of the following is the most accurate description of why concentration of frontier AI capability in a small number of private companies is a democratic concern, independent of whether those companies currently misuse their power?
A student argues that media literacy education is not a genuine solution to misinformation because: (a) research shows individual media literacy effects are small, and (b) the problem is structural — algorithms amplify false content regardless of how discerning individual readers are. A classmate responds that individual habits still matter because viral spread requires sharing, and individuals control whether they share. Which position is better supported by the module's content?
Module Synthesis: Your Democratic AI Position
- You have now studied the full arc of AI's relationship to democratic society: the information ecosystem, virality and attention, misinformation and deepfakes, surveillance, elections, power concentration, law, and resilience.
- For this synthesis activity, write a structured position paper of 400 to 600 words addressing the following prompt:
- PROMPT: A policymaker asks you: 'Is AI, on balance, a threat to democracy or a tool that democracy can harness?' You must give a substantive answer — not 'it depends' without elaboration, but a real analytical position supported by evidence from this module.
- Your paper must:
- 1. State your position clearly in the first paragraph.
- 2. Provide at least two specific pieces of evidence or examples from this module that support your position.
- 3. Acknowledge the strongest counterargument to your position and explain why you are not persuaded by it (or why it qualifies but does not overturn your position).
- 4. Propose one specific, concrete policy recommendation that follows from your analysis.
- 5. Identify one thing you remain genuinely uncertain about.
- This is not a test of whether you take the 'right' position — there is no single right position. It is a test of whether you can reason carefully, use evidence, acknowledge complexity, and reach a defensible conclusion.
- After writing, exchange papers with a partner. Your partner should identify: (a) the clearest piece of reasoning, (b) the weakest piece of reasoning, and (c) one question your paper did not address that they think matters. Revise based on this feedback.