The 2024 International Workshop on Reimagining Democracy (IWORD), held December 10–11 at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center, brought together an eclectic group of thinkers to tackle a fundamental question: If we could start democracy from scratch in the 21st century, what would it look like?
Led by Henry Farrell, SNF Agora Institute Professor of International Affairs; Bruce Schneier, cryptographer and lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School; and Divya Siddharth, a political economist at Microsoft, the workshop focused on how artificial intelligence might reshape democratic systems in the 21st century.
“This is not your typical academic conference,” Farrell said. “The goal is to galvanize people into thinking in unexpected ways and to create a community of unconventional thinkers who can explore democracy from a variety of perspectives.”
The workshop gathered a mix of academics, engineers, policymakers, and science fiction writers, creating an atmosphere that encouraged exploration. Ada Palmer, a historian and science fiction author, used the metaphor of an old refrigerator to warn about the risks of designing new systems without understanding their potential flaws. “It’s like when you’re buying a new fridge,” Farrell explained, paraphrasing Palmer. “You have an old fridge which is clunky, which is nasty, which is leaking peculiar things in peculiar ways.… And you think, oh my God, let’s get rid of this old fridge and let’s replace it with a brand-new shiny fridge, which is going to be full of awesome. And Ada’s point is, well any new fridge is more or less an old fridge which has not yet had the opportunity to mature.”
Discussions of artificial intelligence ranged from DeepMind’s “Habermas Machine,” an AI designed to foster consensus on contentious issues, to broader questions about how AI might disrupt existing democratic norms. “There’s an implicit dichotomy,” Farrell said, “between those who are interested in deliberation and those who are thinking more broadly about the consequences of AI for democracy.”
While the panels provided structure, Farrell emphasized that the workshop’s real value came from the informal moments. “The real action happens in the informal conversations rather than in the formal set pieces,” he said. These hallway discussions and casual exchanges often sparked surprising connections and fresh ideas.
The inclusion of science fiction writers like Ada Palmer and Ted Chiang added a unique dimension to the event. Farrell noted, “Science fiction writers and other people like that … have license to speculate in a way that social scientists very often feel that they don’t.… Having them as part of the mix means that stuffier social scientists such as myself feel like we have a little bit more license to let our freak flag fly.”
Farrell stressed that the workshop was not about producing immediate solutions but about building a community. “This is about building a community of people who think differently about democracy,” he said. “It’s about expanding our sense of what’s possible and preparing for the practical questions of tomorrow.”
Reflecting on the event, Farrell added, “If we want to strengthen democracy, we need to create spaces for unexpected conversations and bring together people who wouldn’t normally be in the same room.” For Farrell and the organizers, the workshop’s success wasn’t in answers but in the bold, challenging questions it raised.
For a complete list of attendees, visit schneier.com/iword/attendees-2024.