Exploring AI Futures: Why We Need New Narratives for Digital Governance

Covers of the Graphic Novellas — narratives to advance our discussions in defining our AI future(s).

In my local news feed, a story caught my eye. The Canadian province of Alberta is piloting the use of AI to help draft regulations, specifically to define what constitutes “Alberta Whisky.” It is an experiment to explore optimizations with AI, with a thoughtful emphasis on human-in-the-loop checks.

But as a researcher focusing on AI and society, I see this as part of a much larger, global signal. From Brazilian city councils passing AI-drafted laws to Estonian AI agents executing public services, the machinery of government is changing.

The challenge is that these shifts are often invisible. Terms like “algorithmic opacity,” “explainability,” or “agentic fabrics” are abstract.

This is where we face a literacy gap. We cannot decide what future we want if we cannot picture it. To bridge this gap, I turned to visual narrative.

Seeing the Futures

I created two graphic novellas, The Steward and Fork the Vote, not merely as stories, but as tools for literacy and exploration. They act as “tangible futures” — ways to experience the trade-offs of AI governance before we lock them in.

They explore the critical questions raised by the global experiments we are seeing today:

1. The Lure of Efficiency vs. The Risk of Control In Dublin, the “Smart Dublin” initiative is deploying city-scale AI to monitor traffic patterns and optimize for road safety. The goal is noble: safer streets and better flow. But as we hand over more of our urban management to algorithms, we must ask: Where does the human fit in a city optimized by code?

• The Novella: *The Steward visualizes a city that has fully embraced this path. It explores what “optimized governance” actually feels like to live under. It asks: How much human agency are we willing to trade for stability, order, and efficiency?*

2. The Shift to Agentic Governance While some cities use AI to audit rules, others are preparing for AI to execute them. Initiatives like The Agentic State envision a future where autonomous agents handle the complexity and scale of public administration, moving from reactive bureaucracy to proactive service delivery. The promise is responsive government at machine speed. But the risk is a system that evolves faster than we can govern it.

• The Novella: *Fork the Vote* probes this crisis of trust. It follows a data scientist trying to audit a decentralized AI governance system (The NODE). It visualizes the “agentic risks” that emerge when we hand democratic processes over to autonomous swarms.

Why Visual Narrative?

By using the medium of the graphic novella, we can:

• Make the Invisible Visible: We can literally draw the “black box” and agentic participants in our governing efforts. We can show how the algorithm connects to the people on the street.
• Simulate Consequences: We can play out the “what if” scenarios of Singapore’s AI co-pilots or Chile’s legislative tools. We can start to discuss what futures appeal to us, and why.
• Democratize the Debate: These stories invite more people into the room to discuss our collective future. Not everyone wants to dig into Google Scholar or arXiv to learn about the opportunities (and challenges) afforded by AI.

Exploring These Futures

We are at a branching point. The tools are being deployed (from Alberta to Estonia), but the norms are not yet set.

I invite you to read these novellas not just as entertainment, but as provocations. They are designed to help us build the literacy required to answer the hardest question of our time: Who is defining the boundaries of our digital state?

• Read The Steward (PDF)
• Read Fork the Vote (PDF)