Algorithmic Governance

Algorithmic Governance is a video installation that explores a future where policy is made by computer code. This work explored what might come to pass if algorithms (shorthand for artificial intelligence, before the hype cycle began) guided policy development and democratic representation. It debuted at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ in 2019 as the culmination of a yearlong YBCA Fellowship that brought together Bay Area artists in exploring ways to spark community action and vision for an evolving future of political power. In a staged living room, a TV plays a loop of news clips covering hypothetical implications while viewers vote on the model’s optimization criteria. The work preceded mainstream discussion of decentralized autonomous organizations, and sought to be neither critical nor endorsing, simply inviting reflections of how the philosophy flows for human and non-human policy decision making. Hundreds of citizens engaged with it, filling out ballots to optimize the algorithm: Who designs the guiding logic, what are its inputs, what is it optimizing for?

  • The living room scene is staged as a home on election night. Participants wandered through to sit, watch the fictional newsreels from the future, and slowly realize that all the artifacts and the video were telling a story of a world governed by algorithm.

  • Guests filled out ballots to "vote" on the ethical philosophical models and specific fictional candidates, and to optimize the algorithm: Who designs the guiding logic, what are its inputs, what is it optimizing for?

  • Details set the scene on election night, 3022, from a calendar to party supplies.