Handbook on Public Policy and Artificial Intelligence (Handbooks of Research on Public Policy series)

This timely Handbook explores the relationship between public policy and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies across a broad range of geographical, technical, political and policy contexts. It contributes to critical AI studies, focusing on the intersection of the norms, discourses, policies, practices and regulation that shape AI in the public sector.

Expert authors in the field discuss the creation and use of AI technologies, and how public authorities respond to their development, by bringing together emerging scholarly debates about AI technologies with longer-standing insights on public administration, policy, regulation and governance. Contributions in the Handbook mobilize diverse perspectives to critically examine techno-solutionist approaches to public policy and AI, dissect the politico-economic interests underlying AI promotion and analyse implications for sustainable development, fairness and equality. Ultimately, this Handbook questions whether regulatory concepts such as ethical, trustworthy or accountable AI safeguard a democratic future or contribute to a problematic de-politicization of the public sector.

The Handbook on Public Policy and Artificial Intelligence is a crucial resource for students and scholars of public policy and administration, political economy, political science, sociology, law, regulation and governance, computer science and technology studies. It is also beneficial to policy practitioners, civil society actors and regulators working with AI technologies.

Edited by Regine Paul, Professor in Political Science, Department of Government, University of Bergen, Norway, Emma Carmel, Professor of Governance and Public Policy, Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath and Jennifer Cobbe, Assistant Professor in Law and Technology, Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, UK