Hey Chat... Who should I vote for? (Translated)

The use of generative artificial intelligence is rapidly increasing, and today three out of four young people aged 16-24 use this technology - often in private contexts. This means that first-time voters, who may not yet have engaged deeply with politics, are increasingly turning to chatbots for guidance and advice. This development presents important opportunities, but also significant risks.

In the light of such trends, CAISA, TjekDet and the ADD project invite you to a professional webinar focusing on key questions at the intersection of AI, democracy, and youth engagement:

How are young people affected when chatbots are used as political advisors?
What biases, technical mechanisms, and algorithmic structures shape chatbot responses?
What are the implications for democratic dialogue and young people's political formation?

The webinar brings together researchers and practitioners for a timely, research-based discussion of AI in elections and political communication. It is based on the educational material "Hey Chat... who should I vote for?" (Translated), developed by TjekDet for upper secondary education to strengthen young people's critical understanding of chatbots, misinformation, prompting, and source criticism in an election context.

Programme

09.00 AM – Welcome and introduction: Chatbots as a new source of political information during election campaigns.

09.05 AM – Introduction to the material: “Hey chat… Who should I vote for?” (Translated) and how it can be used to support critical AI literacy among students.

09.10 AM – AI and bias in language models
Stephanie Brandl, CAISA (presentation in English)
How do chatbots generate responses? Where does bias arise - and how do prompts influence outcomes?

09.25 AM – AI, democracy, and information sources
Thomas Ploug, Professor of AI Ethics, Aalborg University
What does it mean for democracy when AI becomes a source of political information?

09.35 AI – Discussion
Conversation between Thomas Ploug and Søren Engelbrecht, journalist at TjekDet

09.45 AM – Q&A

10.00 AM – Closing remarks

Digital sovereignty is multidimensional and requires priority

In a time of geopolitical instability and rapid AI development, control over digital infrastructure and data has become critical. While there is broad agreement on the need for action at the national, Nordic, and EU levels, a shared language around digital sovereignty is still lacking. This lack of alignment leads either to inaction or to narrow technical solutions without strategic direction. The core argument of the brief is that digital sovereignty is a multidimensional concept, involving both principled positions and pragmatic choices. Reducing it to technical solutions risks overlooking the values and trade-offs that determine who controls and benefits from these systems. Conversely, focusing solely on values leads to abstract principles without practical implementation or real impact. Digital sovereignty is rarely about choosing between full self-sufficiency and total dependence. Rather, it is about balancing often competing demands for openness, security, competitiveness, growth, values, and rights in a world where capabilities are unevenly distributed. This means that it is necessary to define who or what is to be protected or promoted, within the domains of security, economic growth, or citizens’ rights, and to recognize that choices in one domain may strengthen or undermine another. The brief focuses on AI as the area where digital sovereignty is most acutely at stake, but the concepts apply more broadly to digital infrastructure and data. It provides decision-makers with tools to navigate these dilemmas by presenting:

- A conceptual framework for identifying who or what should be digitally sovereign.

- An overview of how digital sovereignty is prioritized around the world.

- An understanding that sovereignty can be exercised through three control regimes: ownership, expertise, or regulation – but that none of these are sufficient on their own.

The central implication of the brief is that digital sovereignty requires an integrated strategy that combines ownership, expertise, and regulation, while managing the interdependencies and trade-offs between security, economic growth, and citizens’ rights through clear objectives. Without this holistic approach, there is a risk of ineffective regulation, unusable infrastructure, or a lack of capacity to develop, maintain, and apply solutions in practice, potentially undermining security, growth, or rights.