The project  draws on political and legal theory to investigate the challenges posed by digital and AI technologies to democratic principles, structures and institutions. Centring on the category of the 'public' as its core object and unit of analysis, the project aims to shift focus from the challenges technology poses to the rights and interests of individuals, to the various ways in which it disrupts democracy's most fundamental constitutive element and thus its very fabric. In pursuit of this inquiry, four sites of democratic construction in which the 'public' is mutated and transformed by the introduction of digital and AI technologies as mediators of political interaction are examined:

(1) the site of the judiciary, and the use of AI by courts and judges to fulfill a variety of judicial functions;

(2) the site of public administration, and the use of AI to assist or replace public decision-makers in their routine decision-making tasks ; 

(3) the site of public discourse, and the use of digital and AI technology to mediate communication and information exchanges; and

(4) the site of (physical) public space, and the use of digital and AI technologies of smart cities to mediate and govern human interaction in this space. 

While the investigation of each site will be independent, the project aims to offer an overarching theorization of how the 'public' is mutated by technology, to outline the fundamental risks this poses to the democratic edifice, and to discuss the implications of the new problem definitions it offers for extant legal frameworks that regulate technology. The project will culminate in a major monograph also entitled The 'Public' Disrupted: The Transformative Effects of Technology on Democracy.