Artificial intelligence is increasingly discussed not simply as a tool but in terms of agents, assistants, companions, collaborators, and potentially more autonomous digital entities. AI systems may increasingly communicate, negotiate, remember, pursue objectives, interact with institutions, and participate in social and political environments alongside humans. These developments have generated important debates about alignment, safety, intelligence, consciousness, and control. But they also invite distinctly political considerations: How do digital beings learn to understand and enact social norms, authority, cooperation, conflict, institutions, and their relationships with humans and other agents? How do they learn to recognize authority, rules, rights, and obligations? Who decides which values, histories, and political assumptions they should learn/have access to? What can the study of human political socialization teach us about creating and governing artificial agents?
To this end, this panel invites political scientists, international relations scholars, political theorists, and interdisciplinary researchers to explore the political implications of creating and socializing increasingly agentic artificial entities. Rather than asking only how AI systems should be controlled, we ask what it might mean for them to be raised, educated, socialized, governed, and incorporated into political worlds.
Both empirical and theoretical contributions are welcome and may address questions and themes including, but not limited to:
- What can political science and IR teach digital beings?
- Can digital beings receive political education without political indoctrination?
- How should digital beings navigate different political systems?
- What might diplomacy between humans and digital beings look like?
- What rights and responsibilities might accompany artificial agency?
- What institutions will govern relationships among humans and artificial agents?
- Who makes decisions and has a voice on how digital beings can be raised? What can the rest of us demand from those who raise digital beings?
- What does raising digital beings mean for human development?
