Can Government of and by API Still Be Government ‘for the People’?

(James Goodwin, Arvind Salem – Lawfare) When Anthropic, the U.S. company behind the Claude artificial intelligence (AI) tool, refused to allow its product to be used for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons, the Department of Defense took the extraordinary step of designating the company a “supply chain” risk—a move that would bar Pentagon contractors from doing business with Anthropic. Much of the focus on this episode has centered on the legal questions Anthropic raised in response (for example, its First Amendment rights and applicable requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act) as well as practical concerns around proposed carveouts to avoid a full bar. While these questions are important, they obscure a more far-reaching problem: democratic accountability implications of the government’s growing dependence on AI systems like Claude. Policy experts have long worried about the democratic accountability implications of outsourcing core governance functions to for-profit companies. AI replicates that dynamic, but with systems designed to mimic or even substitute for human reasoning and deliberation. That this is occurring against a backdrop of decimated state capacity and erosion of long-standing democratic norms makes it all the more concerning. As AI’s capabilities and prevalence grow, the temptation to shift government functions away from the career civil service and toward these systems is likely to follow. A consequential side effect of this development is that procurement will take on increased significance as a policymaking venue, gradually displacing more democratically accountable channels such as notice-and-comment rulemaking. This shift will further reinforce the marginalization of the career civil service. – Can Government of and by API Still Be Government ‘for the People’? | Lawfare