Rebooting Democracy in the Age of AI

This week on Reboot Democracy, Beth Simone Noveck speaks with Dave Cole, New Jersey’s Chief Innovation Officer, about how the newly codified New Jersey Innovation Authority is using AI to reduce delays in Medicaid, SNAP, unemployment insurance, and Summer EBT while keeping human judgment central; Dane Gambrell’s latest Research Radar examines how AI is making decades of National Labor Relations Board decisions searchable and usable for workers and advocates navigating a fragmented labor law system; and in Global AI Watch, Nico Campbell shares an InnovateUS case study from Hillerød, Denmark, where AI-supported public engagement helped city leaders treat participation itself as civic infrastructure. Beyond Reboot, governments continue to test AI in high-stakes settings. From Utah’s AI-assisted prescription renewals and England’s use of AI to manage emergency care demand, to debates over AI surveillance in New York’s transit system. New policy briefs from India and Europe argue for treating AI infrastructure as a public good even as budget uncertainty threatens digital skills and inclusion efforts.

Facing worsening congestion and no room to build new roads, Hillerød, Denmark, turned to its residents for direction. Diverse engagement channels and AI tools helped the city identify priorities politicians hadn’t anticipated.

U.S. labor law is shaped by thousands of decisions issued each year by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the courts, yet much of this precedent remains difficult for workers, organizers, and even lawyers to access in practice. This piece examines how the NLRB’s fragmented document publication system creates real information barriers for workers and their advocates. A new tool, NLRB Research, uses open-source software and AI to make labor law searchable and and usable, demonstrating how improving access to public legal information can help empower workers to understand and act on their rights.