Does AI Have a Place in Rural Governance? Navigating the co-creation of responsive digital technology solutions in rural Canada and Scotland

Governments across jurisdictions continue to struggle to develop and implement robust, flexible, and effective rural policies that are capable of meeting the ever-changing realities and contexts of rural communities. In the face of ongoing disinvestment and resulting capacity challenges, rural people and places are often denied opportunities to achieve their self-determined visions for their futures, suffering from the consequences of urban bias in 'trickle down' policymaking. Emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Blockchain are promoted as offering opportunities to support capacity building and participatory forms of governance. It is essential to understand if and how these promises could or would work for rural communities. Further, it is critical that productive use-cases for emerging technologies are considered through a balanced lens that directs when and how they can be employed and the guardrails required to ensure appropriate use. This is because emerging technologies pose considerable risks and ethical considerations, particularly in terms of democratic processes, individual and collective rights, equity and socioeconomic justice, infrastructure, and environmental impacts, among other concerns. Without a clear and commonly shared schema for ensuring appropriate oversight, these technologies could further reinforce uneven and inequitable development patterns in ways that serve the further deepen existing challenges and continue existing trends of exclusion and marginalization of rural people and communities. This knowledge synthesis project will produce a rigorous scoping review of foundational literature and policy evidence at the intersection of rural development, digital technologies, and public policy. It will draw on international and cross-sectoral evidence from Canada and Scotland and serve as a critical building block in asking if, whether, and how AI and other emerging technologies have a role to play in rural development and capacity building -- and in what ways governments must account for the specific dynamics of rurality when approaching the use and governance of AI in policy interventions. We will consider both the opportunities and challenges posed by emerging technologies like AI, ML, and Blockchain technology, including locating and reviewing current and proposed use cases and the governance systems directing those uses. We will apply a critical lens to consider questions regarding human rights, including whether communities have the right to exclude themselves from participation in technologically-based policy interventions, whether and how communities may be resisting or refusing to participate in AI-driven interventions (and why), including considerations of how emerging literature on "the right to be rural" (see Foster & Jarman, 2022) might support effective governance at the intersection of rurality and new technologies. The synthesis of the scoping review will present a concept map and categorization/differentiation of a schema/spectrum of use cases for different emerging technologies that includes the required considerations, skills, capacities, and guardrails required to produce maximum benefit and appropriate containment of risks. As rural places continue to face the challenges and opportunities of changing socioeconomic and environmental realities, often serving as 'canaries in the coal mine' in the current era of overlapping crises and opportunities, this knowledge synthesis project will produce vitally timely information to both researchers and policymakers, highlighting critical questions at intersections of rural governance and emerging technologies that may illuminate paths forward for communities of all types.