Free play for tech-bros or heavy-handed regulation? Young people's AI scenarios sparked debate at Christiansborg
On Tuesday, March 18, six months of work culminated. Together with leading AI experts, 200 young people developed possible future scenarios for the development of responsible AI. Two young people pitched the scenarios and the main dilemmas in front of members of the Danish Parliament's Committee for Digitalization and IT. It turned into a lively debate. Read the scenarios and dilemmas and watch clips from the debate.
"We need to find a way where there is room for innovation within our own ethical framework," said Caroline Stage Olsen, Minister of Digitalization, opening the Youth Hearing on the future of responsible AI.
But how do we ensure ethical development in the midst of a global AI race? Should the state set the course with regulation, or should the consumer steer the way forward? Or is a high level of technological understanding among Danes the only realistic solution?
The politicians and members of the Danish Parliament's Committee for Digitalization and IT, Lisbeth Bech-Nielsen (SF), Jeppe Søe (non-attached), Per Husted Nielsen (S) and Kim Edberg Andersen (DD), debated this in the Common Hall at Christiansborg in front of an audience of young people and leading AI experts.
Youth representatives Magnus Lambæk Lund and Selma Voldtofte Rian, who helped develop the future scenarios for responsible AI, pitched five dilemmas to the four politicians.
In this article you can read the future scenarios and learn more about how they are developed - and then you can read and see the politicians' reception of the scenarios.
What is Folketingets Vilde Uge?
The youth hearing was the grand finale of 'Folketingets Vilde Uge' - a new democracy format developed by INVI in collaboration with SAGA and supported by the Tuborg Foundation with the goal of bringing young people into the political engine room. Over six months, more than 700 young people have contributed to the project.
The pilot project, Folketingets Vilde Uge, took place over six months, with three main events. First, the political laboratory, where young people and experts worked together over two days to develop five scenarios and ten dilemmas. Then the Youth Summit, where 200 young people voted on which five of the ten dilemmas they thought should be presented to politicians at the culminating event: The Youth Hearing.
In the following two sections, you can learn more about how the dilemmas were created. Then you can read the scenarios and watch clips from the politicians' debate.
The foresight method
The policy lab where young people and experts developed the scenarios for responsible AI used the foresight method to illustrate how we can create responsible AI. Foresight is a systematic approach to exploring the future in a way that equips us to make better decisions today. It's not about predicting what exactly will happen, but about exploring what possible futures we might face and how we can best prepare for them.
It allows us to challenge our assumptions, expand our strategic horizons, and create more flexible and resilient solutions to wild problems. In the policy lab, we used scenario planning, which is one of the foresight methods that is particularly well suited for bringing different actors together to jointly explore possible futures.
Four of the scenarios are based on the main uncertainties that young people and practitioners see for AI's development in Denmark. The uncertainties form two axes: one on how the technology will be regulated and one on the population's understanding of technology. See the matrix below:
To extend political thinking beyond the probable, the participants in the political lab also created a fifth wild card scenario. Here they thought outside the box and explored a more speculative 'what if' idea of the future.
Learn more about the scenarios and dilemmas
This resulted in a total of five future scenarios, each with two associated dilemmas, which you can dive into below.
Unfold each scenario to read the dilemmas - here you will also find links to view the visualization and full description of each scenario.
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Scenario A is the scenario in which there is both high technology understanding and maximum government regulation. Read the two dilemmas below:
A1 - "Strict rules vs global competition"
"How can we compete globally when most technologies are still developed by foreign companies with completely different and less stringent ethical standards?"
A2 - "Tech education: open or isolation"
"Should we educate citizens to adapt to international technology practices, even if it goes against Danish ideals, or stick to our own standards and accept possible isolation?"
See the the full scenario A here.
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Scenario B is the scenario in which there is high technology understanding and minimal government regulation. Read the two dilemmas below.
B1 - "Tech education or free play"
Should citizens' understanding of technology be enhanced through mandatory education or should it be up to the individual to choose their own AI approach?
B2 - "Government reward or free market forces"
Should the government reward companies that develop ethical AI solutions or should the market itself regulate citizens' demand for responsible products?
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Scenario C is the scenario in which there is low technology understanding and maximum government regulation. Read the two dilemmas here:
C1 - "International AI collaborations or closed Danish club"
"Should Denmark open up to international AI collaborations to ensure technological development or continue to develop an independent technology sector based on its own values and security principles?"
C2 - "Secular values or Danish values"
"Should Denmark maintain its strict data security and risk technological isolation from the rest of the world, or start sharing data to ensure that international AI systems better reflect Danish values?"
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Scenario D is the scenario in which there is low technology understanding and minimal government regulation. Read the two dilemmas here:
D1 - "Cultural diversity or acceptance of homogenization"
Should Denmark regulate AI monopolies to ensure cultural diversity that lets Denmark take care of its own development, even though it may harm economic growth, or accept homogenization of the market as the price to ensure technological progress?
D2 - "Accept the algorithms or invest in critical thinking"
Should we accept an algorithm-driven media landscape that prioritizes optimizing our habits and actions, or invest in education and awareness to strengthen citizens' critical sense towards personalized content?
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Here you've thought outside the box and explored a less likely scenario.
Read the two dilemmas here:
W1 - "Basic income or new jobs"
Should the state prioritize a high living wage to promote volunteerism and community, or should the funds be used to create new labor markets and education adapted to human skills?
W2 - "Social responsibility or shareholders first"
"Should companies in Denmark be obliged to reinvest profits in social projects such as education, care, local communities and associations, or should they be free to prioritize shareholder interests?"
Watch and read the politicians' dilemma debate
At the Youth Hearing, Selma Voldtofte Rian and Magnus Lambæk Lund took turns presenting the five dilemmas to the politicians. Here Selma Voldtofte Rian presents the first dilemma, which reads:
"How can we compete globally when most technologies are still developed by foreign companies with completely different and less stringent ethical standards?"
Who sets the pace - the market or politicians?
The question of whether Denmark and the EU should take the lead in regulating new technology or keep up with global competition divided the panel.
Lisbeth Bech-Nielsen (SF) sees a new reality taking shape, where traditional dividing lines between policy areas are becoming increasingly blurred. For her, it's no longer just about the economy and innovation, but also about geopolitics and security. Europe must be able to stand more on its own two feet, she says, adding that it's high time to invest heavily in building up its own technological muscle. And this can be done much more cheaply than we previously thought, she says:
"China's Deepseek showed that you can actually make some things much cheaper in a completely different way than you thought. So being the last mover means that you can actually skip some development steps on this staircase."
But Kim Edberg Andersen sees it differently. In his eyes, it's hard to imagine that tighter regulations and slower processes can match the pace and cost of the global tech scene. He believes that the market - and consumers - are very much setting the agenda:
"As soon as we put extra limits on the development of technology, it takes longer to develop and implement. And then it becomes more expensive. And we just live in a society where it's the customers in the store who decide," says Andersen and continues:
"I'm just worried that this is a premise that sounds really good, but if we do it, we'll fall behind."
The stowaways
Magnus Lambæk Lund jumps on stage to introduce the next dilemma:
Should we accept an algorithm-driven media landscape that prioritizes optimizing our habits and actions, or invest in education and awareness to strengthen citizens' critical sense towards personalized content?
Stupid ban or timely regulation?
Where does Denmark's resilience to the potentially negative consequences of AI lie - is it through educating the population or should we develop our own artificial intelligence?
According to Per Husted Nielsen and Jeppe Søe, it's still important that we don't close in on ourselves. We must keep up with global developments and prepare the population to meet them. Per Husted Nielsen says:
"We've got almost everyone on board the IT wave. When we look at our digitization, people have accepted it and think MIT-ID is a good thing, and we need to do the same with AI. We need a grassroots movement."
Jeppe Søe believes that we are at the mercy of global development and therefore, according to him, there is no point in banning technologies:
"We have a digitalization minister who made video clips the other day where she said 'Tiktok is shit'"
This approach is useless, Søe says, referring to the fact that it has been banned for all politicians to have TikTok on their work phones. This puts the political system out of step with the digital reality that people already live in, and according to Søe, it only puts Denmark and Europe behind in the global development.
But according to Lisbeth Bech-Nielsen, it's no use referring to previous technologies when considering how to handle AI.
"We're not talking about MIT-ID right now," Lisbeth Bech-Nielsen begins. "AI is fundamentally different from anything we've seen before because it's also an agent. It's something that can also act independently of us if it's first prompted in a certain way or given a certain task. And that's just unlike any other technology," she says
It's important that we talk about what matters to us as a society right now, what values we want to live by. We shouldn't just see tech companies as "a force of nature that we can't fight against," says Lisbeth Bech-Nielsen.
According to Lisbeth Bech-Nielsen, the EU has so far sat back and let the technological breakthroughs come from elsewhere.
It's time for a change of pace. The Draghi report says so. Ursula Von Der Leyen says so, says Lisbeth Bech-Nielsen:
"Now is the time to decide what Europe should look like, how Europe should not be an open-air museum, how we should stand on our own feet, have autonomy, independence and so on. Because otherwise we will have no choice. Our society will be ruled by technology from an unstable USA or an autocratic China, so we have to make choices to create the future we want."
Young people wrote letters to themselves in the future
At the Youth Summit, young people wrote letters to themselves in the future. They did this to train their ability to imagine it. Here, Magnus Lambæk Lund and Selma Voldtofte Rian read the letters to the politicians to also trace their gaze into the future. A respite to let their minds drift to the future in the middle of the debate.
Is the absence of regulation freedom?
Lisbeth Bech-Nielsen warns against the black and white narrative where regulation equals restriction and minimal regulation equals individual freedom.
"You can have good regulation. You can have bad regulation, you can have very invasive regulation. You can have sensible regulation. But the idea that the absence of regulation just gives freedom to the individual, I think that's a liberal fantasy."
Bech-Nielsen points to the tech giants as a clear example of how lack of regulation creates monopolies.
It's not just market forces at work, she warns - it's also political power. Tech CEOs are increasingly entangled in the heart of American politics, and the products they create are addictive, especially for children and young people.
"You can see that the men who run those companies are now also completely immersed in the heart of American politics and all that it entails, and they are now producing products that our children - at least some of them - will become and themselves will become dependent on."
Should the government reward companies that develop ethical AI solutions, or should the market itself regulate citizens' demand for responsible products?
"No," says Kim Edberg Andersen resolutely after the dilemma was read out: "The state should not interfere in this at all - and it won't be able to."
Citizens get what they ask for, and that responsibility cannot be placed on the shoulders of parliamentary politicians.
"If we consume ethical AI, then we get ethical AI - otherwise we get what's cheapest and fastest and best," says Kim Edberg Andersen.
While Kim Edberg Andersen believes that consumers will steer the direction, Per Husted Nielsen believes that the government will take control instead:
"If we look at who will be the biggest buyer of AI solutions, it will be the government, and then it will actually work in the same way as when we build public buildings: We have some standards and ethical rules, some things you have to live up to, and of course, as a society, we must also make demands on the suppliers we have when we buy."
There's just one problem, says Lisbeth Bech-Nielsen: Even though we could make demands, we don't.
"I've negotiated the procurement law twice now, and there has been no interest in including any of these elements. But it could be done if there was a political desire to do so," she says.
According to Lisbeth Bech-Nielsen, we are not thinking things through, especially not in the current security situation, where she believes we need more competition.
"I always try to find liberals and talk to them about: Why do you support monopolistic companies? Why don't you want more competition? Does the socialist in the room have to be the most liberal of all? I think it's really strange that there isn't a greater demand for breaking some of these monopolies and getting more proper competition," says Lisbeth Bech-Nielsen.
After the debate, Magnus Lambæk Lund and Selma Voldtofte Rian tell us how they experienced it, watch here: