Brokers of Digital Sovereignty: Infrastructural Dependencies in the AI-enabled Welfare State
Speaker: Signe Sophus Lai, University of Copenaghen
When: 10th December 2026, 12:00 BST
Where: online (Teams)
Book your (free) ticket
Abstract
As European governments increasingly adopt AI systems to advance public-sector innovation and digital sovereignty, they often become entangled in new types of infrastructural dependency on global technology platforms. This talk examines how local suppliers of public AI systems act as brokers between welfare states and Big Tech, embedding cloud services, software, APIs and other critical infrastructures into public-sector technologies. Drawing on a dataset of 539 AI systems deployed in the Danish public sector across education, health, employment and more, we map these supplier networks and show how everyday technological choices create dependencies and power asymmetries that challenge ambitions of democratic accountability, economic sustainability and digital sovereignty. By making visible the infrastructures underpinning public AI, the talk highlights why the technical and commercial foundations of the AI-enabled welfare state warrant greater scholarly and democratic scrutiny.
Bio
Signe Sophus Lai is an Associate Professor in the Center for Tracking and Society at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her research on the political economy of digital infrastructures advances new empirical methods for studying digital communication systems and develops a critical agenda on digital infrastructural power. She is co-founder of the Digital Infrastructure Think Tank and has co-authored four books published with, amongst others, Routledge and Palgrave Macmillan, on digital methods, infrastructure, and communication systems.
**IMPORTANT NOTE**
You will receive the details to log into the call in a confirmation message from Eventbrite after you have registered successfully. If you don't see that message, please check your spam folder or contact us at MHSES-REI-Events@ed.ac.uk.
For any enquiries concerning this event, please email MHSES-REI-Events@ed.ac.uk