This past November, Project Liberty Institute (PLI), in partnership with Georgetown’s Tech and Public Policy (TPP) program, hosted a Workshop on Deliberation, Governance and Decentralized Social Networks at the McCourt School of Public Policy in Washington, DC. The event brought together a diverse group of practitioners, researchers and students to explore and assess the role AI-assisted deliberation might play in helping online communities govern themselves.
Democratic governance can be unwieldy and challenging to design. Fortunately, tools exist to assist online communities in deliberating the pros and cons of policy– one such tool is digital deliberation. Traditionally, deliberative forms of democracy have been time-consuming, expensive, and conducted in person, with a representative selection of participants lasting days or weeks.
Technological advances, including AI applications, have moved deliberation into the 21st century. Today, deliberative decision-making can happen entirely online and produce meaningful results in hours – even minutes. Representativeness may still require up-front effort, but overall costs are relatively modest. Democratic governance is within reach of numerous online communities and platforms.
Which deliberative tools and approaches would best serve the needs of digital communities, especially decentralized social networks?
To address this question, the Project Liberty Institute [PLI] and Georgetown’s Tech and Public Policy [TPP] explored practical and theoretical considerations in a November workshop.
Day one of the workshop kicked off with an afternoon of hands-on learning, as McCourt Public Policy students experienced the ins and outs of AI-assisted digital deliberation.
Students tested three separate online deliberative tools: deliberation.io, Online Deliberation Platform and Frankly as part of a mock deliberation that decided content moderation policy. The experience sparked insightful dialogue, as students and experts discussed ways digital deliberation can bridge differences within and across communities.
Later that evening, experts were welcomed with a reception and opening remarks from the Dean of McCourt School of Public Policy, Carole Roan Gresenz, who recognised the strong partnership between PLI and TPP, and the alignment between the workshop and Georgetown’s Jesuit values. Following the dean’s remarks, Jessica Theodule, PLI’s Research Manager of Strategic Insights, shared survey results from the morning’s mock deliberation. Students overwhelmingly agreed that the deliberation process encouraged listening and understanding.
The next morning, the workshop opened with a series of sessions examining deliberative tooling through the lens of voice, choice and stake, like consideration of the criteria required for decisions stemming from digital deliberation, and becoming accepted as legitimate by a community.
Later in the day, the workshop considered the self-governance needs of decentralised social networks. Particular attention was paid to the interdependence between context, governance structure and the transition to a more systematic, inclusive deliberative culture.
Key learnings that emerged include:
- A robust ecosystem of deliberative tools exists to meet the governance needs of online communities, including decentralized social networks. Tailoring these tools for specific communities, contexts and decisions is the principal challenge.
- For deliberation to matter, the process must be inclusive and transparent, and any decisions reached must be binding.
- Deliberative tooling design should be human-centered. This applies, in particular, to AI-assisted deliberation.