AI’s progress opens up new possibilities for how societies deliberate, make decisions, and cooperate across differences. Realizing those possibilities is not automatic. Researchers at frontier AI labs have themselves noted that advanced AI could conversely shift the balance toward more concentrated power, while democratic institutions today are navigating real pressures from polarization and rapid technological change. A growing body of work is exploring how AI can support collective deliberation, decision-making, and cooperation. These efforts often develop in parallel with, rather than in conversation with, both the practical realities of democratic practice and the longer-term governance questions raised by rapid AI progress. This workshop, co-hosted by Foresight Institute and the Cooperative AI Foundation, brings together researchers, builders, and practitioners to connect these conversations and explore what it would take for AI to support stronger democratic institutions and the kind of collective decision-making the years ahead will require.

The United Nations’ leading event on AI.

If AI is to serve humanity broadly, not just a handful of centralized players, its capabilities need to grow in directions that strengthen security, protect privacy, and allow peaceful cooperation to emerge among a rising plurality of AI systems and humans. Today, AI development is outpacing our defenses. Traditional security frameworks can’t keep up with the speed, scale, and complexity of AI-driven threats. Privacy-preserving technologies remain fragmented and hard to scale. And as AI systems proliferate into an ecology of coordinating agents, we lack robust mechanisms that favor cooperation over zero-sum competition. This workshop convenes leading researchers, engineers, and funders to explore how to make AI an engine of defense in a multipolar human-AI world.