Digital and artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are increasingly mediating our political and legal interactions. This is manifest, for example, in the ways in which judges and civil servants increasingly rely on algorithmic tools in their decision making, or in how political communications increasingly take place on, and are structured by, digital platforms. These technological developments have been the focal point of legal scholarship engaging with deep-seated puzzles about what is it that we gain and lose from the penetration of digital and AI technologies into political and legal spheres.

In this discussion, I will share my insights on the implications of these transformations for the notion of the ‘public’ as a fundamental category and unit of analysis. The project examines the role that the notion of the ‘public’ plays in democratic politics and jurisprudence, and how this role is obstructed when humans and human functions are replaced by machines. It illuminates the evolving triadic interplay between the ‘public’, democracy, and technology, and considers the ways in which these understandings set novel priorities for law in the regulation of digital and AI technologies.