# Artificial Intelligence in Deliberation: The AI Penalty and the Emergence of a New Deliberative Divide

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.07690 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07690/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 63 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Mar 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Artificial Intelligence, Values and Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.09768/) (2020)
- [Fine-tuning language models to find agreement among humans with diverse preferences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.15006/) (2022)
- [Generative Social Choice](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.01291/) (2023)
- [Opportunities and Risks of LLMs for Scalable Deliberation with Polis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11932/) (2023)
- [Multi-turn Evaluation of Anthropomorphic Behaviours in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.07077/) (2025)
- [Democratic Policy Development using Collective Dialogues and AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.02242/) (2023)
- [Sentence Simplification via Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.11957/) (2023)
- [Citizen Participation and Machine Learning for a Better Democracy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00508/) (2021)
- [An Online Environment for Democratic Deliberation: Motivations, Principles, and Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1302.3912/) (2013)
- [Online Deliberation Design: Choices, Criteria, and Evidence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1302.5177/) (2013)
- [Can LLMs advance democratic values?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08418/) (2024)
- [Conversational Agents to Facilitate Deliberation on Harmful Content in WhatsApp Groups](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20254/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [It's My Agent, Not Me: Personal Privacy Boundaries in AI-Delegated Information Sharing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.21712/) (2025)
- [Artificial Intelligence in Government: Why People Feel They Lose Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.01085/) (2025)
- [The Language You Ask In: Language-Conditioned Ideological Divergence in LLM Analysis of Contested Political Documents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12164/) (2026)
- [The Almost Intelligent Revolution: Options for Scaling Up Deliberation and Empowering People with AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.19864/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Digital deliberation has expanded democratic participation, yet challenges remain. This includes processing information at scale, moderating discussions, fact-checking, or attracting people to participate. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) offer potential solutions, but public perceptions of AI's role in deliberation remain underexplored. Beyond efficiency, democratic deliberation is about voice and recognition. If AI is integrated into deliberation, public trust, acceptance, and willingness to participate may be affected. We conducted a preregistered survey experiment with a representative sample in Germany (n=1850) to examine how information about AI-enabled deliberation influences willingness to participate and perceptions of deliberative quality. Respondents were randomly assigned to treatments that provided them information about deliberative tasks facilitated by either AI or humans. Our findings reveal a significant AI-penalty. Participants were less willing to engage in AI-facilitated deliberation and rated its quality lower than human-led formats. These effects were moderated by individual predispositions. Perceptions of AI's societal benefits and anthropomorphization of AI showed positive interaction effects on people's interest to participate in AI-enabled deliberative formats and positive quality assessments, while AI risk assessments showed negative interactions with information about AI-enabled deliberation. These results suggest AI-enabled deliberation faces substantial public skepticism, potentially even introducing a new deliberative divide. Unlike traditional participation gaps based on education or demographics, this divide is shaped by attitudes toward AI. As democratic engagement increasingly moves online, ensuring AI's role in deliberation does not discourage participation or deepen inequalities will be a key challenge for future research and policy.