Keynote: The Moon, the Ghetto and Artificial Intelligence: Enacting Digital Government

Artificial intelligence promises to offer powerful means, tools and applications to solve a range of problems many of which have long been considered in digital government research. Yet fears abound concerning machine learning, an area of AI that includes opaque algorithms that “learn,” and datasets that may include biases that could have serious implications for the outputs of automated decision making. These profound technological developments collide with troubling increases in social and income inequalities that have produced political destabilization and human suffering. In a prescient lecture, Richard Nelson asked why it is that public policy can put someone on the moon but cannot solve the problems that produce and sustain the ghetto. What should digital government researchers know at artificial intelligence, and what might digital government researchers interested in artificial intelligence applications learn from the metaphor of the moon and the ghetto as we continue to examine and influence the enactment of digital government?