Thursday, Jan. 29, the College of William and Mary Law School hosted an event titled “The Next 250: Navigating the AI Revolution and the Future of Democracy.” The event both celebrated 2026 as the 250th birthday of the nation and featured conversations about what the next 250 years will look like regarding AI and its potential relationship with democracy.
The event’s planners, which included the College of William and Mary’s Digital Democracy Lab, the Institute of Bill of Rights Law, Election Law Society, Data Privacy and Cybersecurity Legal Society and the Military and Veterans Law Society, sought to create a cross-section of disciplines to both look towards the future of the AI revolution, as well as the past of the American Revolution. This event also had goals of building trust and community through these conversations about what success has looked like in the United States’ past, and what it will look like in the future.
Vice Provost for Research Alyson Wilson moderated the conversation, which featured panelists Chiraag Bains, Tim Carroll and Sunita Patel, experts in policymaking, research and technology.
This breadth of involvement brings a variety of perspectives to the topic, which was among its highlights.
“The interdisciplinary studies that I did while I was at William and Mary and the focus of it trained my brain to connect disparate topics that, once you get to the root of it, are not as different as you think,” Carroll said.
Patel works in product security at Micron, a company focusing on memory and storage technology. She also worked at the White House Office of the National Cyber Director and other government agencies.
Similarly, Bains works with Brookings Metro to advance fairness and opportunities through artificial intelligence, democracy and government programs.
“I’m interested in the potential of AI to create shared prosperity and close equity gaps to make this a better country for everyone,” Bains said.
Attendee Raymond J. Bisczat is one of many who found themselves at this event, despite being from a discipline unrelated to government or technology.
“I’m an executive partner at the [Raymond A. Mason School of Business], and I was just interested in the topic,” said Bisczat.
However, considering the vast scope of AI usage today, Bisczat believes it remains relevant to the field of business and many others.
“I do some consulting work as well as being an executive partner, and I use AI quite a bit for research,” Bisczat said.
These varying ideas and industries gave the event nuance. AI is a swiftly progressing technology that conjures up diverse opinions; introducing questions about its implications for the future of democracy brings forth another scope of dialogue.
The panel began with introductions of each speaker, and questions asked by Wilson on the use of AI in our current world.
“AI systems are increasingly influencing what people see, what they buy, what they believe. And so, who truly holds power? Governments? Companies? The public? Algorithms?” Wilson asked.
“We are at this moment, right now, where nobody really understands where the power lies,” Carroll said.
The panelists went on to discuss where this power should lie in the future.
“We the people should be the ones deciding and writing the rules about what impact AI has in our lives and the future of this nation,” Bains said. “But it’s, I think, worth saying, because I feel very much in this field that there is a tendency to treat the coming of AI and what it will do to society as outside of our power to control — as an inevitable force.”
The next topic discussed was the regulation of artificial intelligence, and how these rules are lagging behind AI’s development.
“The challenge with AI is that it’s not just that it will impact every human on the planet, but the ability for somebody to introduce some new technology that is, touching, somehow touching, directly or indirectly, every human on the planet within days or weeks is still going to move faster than any policy that we would have to keep up with it,” Carroll said. “So we need to continue to look at history, not to repeat it, but at the same time we need to understand when we are in uncharted waters.”
Most of the audience’s questions following the panel’s discussion were focused on the negative consequences of AI that are already arising. Despite this, Bains is still optimistic about AI-related issues, such as the creation of synthetic explicit materials, being solved in the near future.
“You’re right to point out some of the risks, and we’re seeing some of those harms right now,” Bains said. “Regulation could functionally outlaw non-consensual intimate imagery, synthetic CSAM…I think those are solvable problems.”
Generally, the event reflected both the excitement at AI’s potential as an emerging technology and the worries that many have about its impact on democracy and society in the future.
