Artificial intelligence-based algorithms are, and will likely be, used extensively by public institutions. We argue that decisions made by AI algorithms cannot count as public decisions, namely, decisions that are made in the name of the public, and that this fact bears on the legitimacy and desirability of deploying AI in lieu of public officials. More specifically, the extensive use of AI in public institutions distances the public from decisions and, hence, undermines their authorship over those decisions.

The assumption underlying the analysis inandwas that there are cases where the value of a decision-making process hinges not only on the quality of the output, namely, the quality of the resulting decisions, but on who makes the decisions and, also, how they are being made. Inandit was argued that public decisions are characterized by the fact that they are being made in the name of all and, further, that the legitimacy and the value of such decisions hinge on the agent who makes them. This chapter identifies more concrete ramifications of this observation. More specifically, it argues that to count as being made in our name, decisions must be publicly discussed, openly debated, and, more concretely, satisfy three conditions: transparency, particitability, and challengeability. Decisions that fail to meet these conditions cannot be characterized as genuinely public decisions. The chapter argues that these conditions are often not met (or not sufficiently met) by AI algorithms. Further, it argues that the source of the failure at issue is structural, rather than contingent or transitory.

The typical arguments concerning privatization are instrumental, relying heavily on comparing the performance of a public functionary with that of its private counterpart. This chapter challenges this approach for leaving unaddressed other important consequences of shifting responsibilities to private entities. Privatization cuts off the link between processes of decision-making and the citizens and, therefore, erodes political engagement and its underlying notion of shared responsibility. Consequently, privatization undermines individuals’ public autonomy.

The effects of privatization are not restricted to the question of whether a public prison is better or worse qua prison than its private counterpart, or whether private forestry is better or worse qua forestry than its public counterpart. Stripping the state of its responsibilities erodes public responsibility, for privatization is not only the transformation of detention centers, trains, tax inquiry offices, forestry operations, and so on, considered one service at a time. It is also the transformation of our political system and public culture from ones characterized by robust shared responsibility and political engagement to ones characterized by fragmentation and sectarianism.

This chapter addresses the questions of what public property is and why it matters. The key to defending public property lies in disambiguating the sense in which this system of rights with respect to external resources is public and, ultimately, about our property. Public property can be said to be ours in the sense that we can freely use it. On this view, held by lawyer economists, democratic egalitarians, and some Kantians, public property is akin to easement rights to enter and use a resource without the leave of its owner. The chapter criticizes proponents of the easement conception, arguing that they cannot but fail to explain why the “publicness” of the resource matters. It demonstrates that easement-like rights are fully consistent with a system of private property.

Instead, the chapter argues that public property’s distinctive value lies in control, rather than use, rights. Public property is ours in the sense that we are entitled to control it. That is, it extends autonomous agency to the construction of public spaces and resources. Public property places individuals in a position of collective self-government, manifested in the following two particular ways: First, expressing the ideas and commitments that the political community as a whole affirms; and second, exerting control over the construction and direction of the resources that make up the environment the individuals occupy.