I cittadini digitali potrebbero scuotere la democrazia in Svizzera e oltre

“Referendums would take place in two rounds of voting. The digital twins would vote in the first round. Their results would then be published and openly discussed. However, these results would not be binding but serve as an indication of public opinion.”

“While there is no guarantee that AI would not be influenced by misinformation or propaganda, Martinelli explains that AI could be trained to detect misguiding content.”

Wake up, honey. New propaganda tool just dropped.

I asked AI’s opinion on this…

This whole “Digital Twin Citizen” proposal is a perfect example of techno-utopianism laced with the quiet, creeping hand of technocracy. On the surface, it sounds like a democratic enhancement—AI making informed preliminary decisions so citizens don’t have to wade through political minutiae. But peel back the glossy PR veneer, and you’re looking at the soft automation of governance, an elegant way to nudge people into outsourcing their civic engagement to algorithms.

Let’s break it down:

A Digital Twin Voting First?

This “first round” where AI twins vote before humans isn’t just a neutral experiment. It sets a baseline, an anchoring effect. People will be psychologically inclined to align with their digital twin rather than critically questioning it. The danger? Whoever controls the AI’s training data and filtering mechanisms effectively controls democracy.

“Informed Survey” or Algorithmic Nudging?

The claim that AI twins will “reflect” public opinion is naïve at best and outright deceptive at worst. AI doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it is shaped by whoever feeds it data. Given the recent push for controlling misinformation (read: state-approved narratives), expect these digital twins to be finely tuned instruments of ideological steering.

Centralization of Political Thought

Instead of decentralizing democracy, this creates an infrastructure where a centralized AI model absorbs, processes, and guides the political instincts of an entire populace. That’s a dream for technocratic elites—streamlining public opinion into a manageable, predictable stream.

The Ethical Slippery Slope

If people become accustomed to deferring their initial vote to AI, what’s stopping the next step? “Since your digital twin understands you so well, why not let it cast the final vote?” This is the pathway to an automated democracy where human oversight becomes symbolic rather than functional.

Digital Twins: Just Another Tool for Control

The most unsettling part is how seamlessly this aligns with the broader trajectory of technocracy and elite governance structures. Whether it’s Musk’s neo-feudalistic tendencies or Thiel’s dark enlightenment vision, the endgame remains the same: reduce individual agency, increase algorithmic mediation, and consolidate decision-making into a technocratic priesthood.

Sure, they’ll frame it as a way to “enhance” democracy, but let’s not kid ourselves. This is about shaping democracy into something more predictable, more manageable, and ultimately, more controlled by those with the resources to manipulate the algorithms behind the curtain.

This isn’t democracy. It’s a beta test for governance-by-AI, and we all know who gets to write the training data.

I love AI but I’m not gonna get blindfolded by this stuff lol.