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Deliberative democracy: AI-assisted · Save Democracy

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. Hello and welcome to Save Democracy
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I'm Katherine Davies
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Democracy is the idea that the people are at the heart of society.
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We, the people, determine who governs us, and anyone who works in
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politics or public service serves us.
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They are meant to act in good faith on our behalf and solve the
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challenges of governance effectively.
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In parliamentary democracy, representatives are elected by us, and
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just as importantly, can be removed by us.
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And holding power to account runs through the whole system of checks and balances,
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including an independent judiciary, and a free and independent media.
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But we all know there are serious problems with this picture in many countries.
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With a loss of trust in politicians, partisan polarization whipped up
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online by algorithms designed toreward hostility, and many other dysfunctions.
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Entrepreneurial populists stand ready with their slogans and easy answers.
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Few of us have the time ourselves to become informed enough about the
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issues to be able to collectively work together to try to make a difference.
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After all, isn't that the job of the people we elect?
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On Save Democracy, we are on a journey to unpack this whole story
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and how it manifests worldwide and what we can do about it.
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I was excited to hear about something that could be a positive constructive
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part of an effective response to these challenges, and its latest
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iteration is a positive use of AI.
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Our guest today, Prof James Fishkin, is a world expert in deliberative
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democracy, runs the Deliberative Democracy Lab, Stanford University
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has worked all over the world for many years in developing & refining
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a way to reinvigorate democracy by connecting the will of the people to
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what is actually done in their name.
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Welcome, Jim.
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Hello.
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Nice to be here
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Great to have you here.
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Jim published book, Can Deliberation Cure the Ills of Democracy?
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It's a wonderful book, it gives examples worldwide of
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what he's about to talk about.
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Could we start with an explanation as to what is deliberative polling,
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deliberative democracy, when it's well-designed, a lesson learned from
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your book, how important that is, with the example say from Texas?
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I'd be delighted.
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Well, et me start with the point that you made, which was very
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important which I emphasize in the book, fundamentally, democracy is
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deliberative democracy is about making a connection between the will
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of the people and what's actually done.
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And I think that's fundamental to any defensible version of democracy
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as compared to authoritarian regimes, which do not pay attention
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to the will of the people or just try to manipulate it if they can.
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Deliberative democracy is creating conditions where the people or a
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representative microcosm, can weigh the competing arguments,
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the reasons for doing one thing rather than another
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And if it's done properly, and I will describe the way that we
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have been doing it in projects around the world now for a number of years,
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the results can be quite surprising.
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They're quite surprising, firstly in that the people make a lot of sense
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and they can deal with difficult issues.
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It's surprising in the sense that the polarization you referred to,
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which divides us strongly and seems so entrenched, is not so entrenched
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that people, when they learn to listen to the other side, will often
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change their views, in both directions so that they move closer together.
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They achieve a better understanding of the problems before them, and
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it's quite surprising in terms of how they end up voting, even a year later.
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So all of these factors we apply in a microcosm of the
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people, a representative sample.
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Now, the representative sample has to be large enough to
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be statistically meaningful.
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It has to be representative in its demographics, but it also, should
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be representative in its attitudes.
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Because why should we listen to a group who've been recruited,
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and pay attention to how they change if we don't know where they started?
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But if they start roughly where the rest of the population starts, and
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they move in a coherent direction for coherent reasons, that should have
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weight with decision-makers, and it often has in countries worldwide.
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And one of the projects in America was a humdrum sort of issue
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that nobody paid much attention to, but it was quite important.
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It was how Texas, which was growing very fast, and still is
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growing very fast, should provide electricity to its residents.
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And the Public Utility Commission required all the big companies
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to consult the public about it.
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The utility companies had a problem because they knew the public didn't
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focus on issue, nor know much about it, and the discovery of, what,
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the public opinion researcher from University of Michigan, Phil
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Converse, had called 'non-attitudes'.
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I've been calling them ever since 'phantom opinions'.
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But people never like to say they don't know, and so they'll
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almost at random pick an alternative rather than admit they don't know.
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And this was in normal polling, questionnaires?
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Yes, in conventional polling.
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And that was discovered in a question about electric utilities.
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So I immediately, saw the opportunity to see, well, what would the people
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really think about electric utilities?
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Because it seems a boring issue, and not one that people focus on, and
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complicated in terms of different energy sources and costs and effects
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on the environment and the rest.
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And most people, most of the time, as you noted, don't think
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about the complexities of policy.
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They are, in the famous words of the political economist Anthony
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Downs, rationally ignorant.
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If I've got one vote in millions, why should I spend a lot of time thinking
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about complicated issues because I've got other things where my time is
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better devoted, my job, my family,
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etc. That's the condition of much of the public on many issues, and
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including electric utilities.
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So we did these projects.
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We did eight of them with good samples, for every part of Texas with
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the electric utility commission, who made the ultimate decision, and the
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companies had to consult the public and say how their future plans
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related to the people's preferences.
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Lo and behold, in all eight projects, the people were willing to pay
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more on electricity bills in order to support investments in renewable
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energy, wind power and solar energy.
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Wind power was particularly cost-effective at the time.
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And now solar power has come online too.
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And so the percentage willing to pay more, even a little more, went
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from something like 50% to 85%.
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All of that's in my book.
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That's an approximation of what the average was over eight.
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This astonished the commission, it astonished the companies.
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So there was a significant investment in wind power in every one of
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their plans that they had to file.
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Those were adopted, and this was then shared, with enthusiasm, by the
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commission with the legislature, who added on requirements for renewable
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energy with enthusiasm as a result of that being what the people wanted.
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And over the course of years, this just built more and more momentum for
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investments in wind power, in Texas.
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And Texas went from being last among the 50 states in the United States,
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that is, it had the lowest amount of wind power of all 50 states,
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to being first, by 2007, surpassing California, it's never looked back.
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It's way ahead of every other state, as a direct result of these plans,
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where the people, came to these conclusions.
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And this was not just in rich areas, but even in very poor areas of Texas.
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Because it was clean, and it was cost-effective, and they didn't
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want the pollution of coal, which was the other low-cost investment.
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They also were willing to tolerate some investments in natural gas,
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a lot cleaner than coal but still has emissions that raise important issues
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So, that was the compromise - no coal, some gas, and some renewable
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energy that was, I think, an important contribution to the energy
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portfolio in Texas, and still is
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Could you maybe bring to life a little bit for our listeners and viewers how
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it actually works, and who informs the information they receive as they go
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through a deliberative polling process.
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Well, there are these options.
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In this case, the options were obvious because it was about how they were
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going to get their energy, it could be coal, natural gas - nuclear
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was off the table at the time, but came in for later projects because
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it was all tied up in litigation.
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But, coal, natural gas, renewable energy, demand side management
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- a fancy term for conservation.
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So you (using less) yes, use less.
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Yes.
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You can encourage people to use less, or you can pipe the
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energy in, in that case from Mexico.
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so they were the viable alternatives, and there were 152 00:10:38,407 --> 00:10:39,867 pros and cons for every one of them.
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We got an advisory committee, represented all relevant
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stakeholders - big customers, advocates of all the different
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forms of energy, consumer groups basically concerned
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about the cost consumers would have to pay &the Environmental
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Defense Fund and other such groups.
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So
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The companies?
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And yes, the companies, had representatives.
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Mm-hmm
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we had a working group that created the materials, they
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were vetted for balance and accuracy by the advisory group
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until we got an agreement.
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And then I insisted on a media partner, and so we had PBS, the
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tv network, locally broadcast the culminating events, so
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the public would be aware of the deliberations and the process.
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So, here's the process.
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You take a survey, & these people are invited & as we developed the
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process over years, we also would make controlled experiments.
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We would have separate control groups, who were randomly
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selected just to take the survey.
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But in this case,
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That's a group surveyed at the beginning and end, but don't
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participate in the polling?
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That's right.
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But, we didn't have those in Texas, but we added them
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as the years went on.
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Yes
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Yes
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But we could compare the people who accepted the invitation with
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the people who didn't in terms of their attitudes & demographics.
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We were able to judge attitudinal & demographic representativeness
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of the people, and we did extremely well.
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And then they take a confidential survey, then they're invited.
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All their expenses are paid.
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These were face-to-face projects.
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And so the first one was in Corpus Christi, Texas, and people from
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all over the area were brought in.
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They spent a weekend, in Corpus Christi, which is quite a nice
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place, depending on time of year.
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It's on the seaside.
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And, they deliberated, in small groups, with trained moderators.
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We had to train the moderators.
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Then there were plenary sessions where questions from the groups
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would be directed to competing experts.
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And all the same representatives who were on the advisory group,
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all those points of view, would be represented in each plenary session.
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But the experts were not allowed to give speeches.
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They were only allowed to answer questions that the people thought
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were most important to make a decision about that part.
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And so this went on for an entire weekend, and then at the end
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So those materials
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they were
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given laid out all the pros and cons of the different options.
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That's right
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and they'd all been vetted for balance
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That's right.
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That's right.
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then as we developed the process, we also make a video of the
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briefing materials, some find it more comfortable with a video.
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Now we always do that as well.
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But at the beginning, we didn't have the video.
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So those changes of opinion, and as I said on the renewable energy,
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were considered to be remarkable particularly that the public even in
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poor areas in Texas would support paying a bit more in order to get a
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clean air process, renewable energy, as part of the portfolio.
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Not necessarily referring to Texas, but just to a general
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experience over many years of all these different polls, what has
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been
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the experience of the participants?
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How have they, how has that impacted them?
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Well, they bond.
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They actually talk about could they have a reunion.
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People don't normally meet others very different from themselves.
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And so, it's a bit like serving on a jury.
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You know, they make friends, and, they find it very engaging.
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They didn't necessarily think it would be, but they do.
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And, we find it has an effect on them, months later, indeed,
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in other projects, we've gone back systematically, a year
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later, and found it creates more engaged and informed citizens.
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They pay more attention to political campaigns, to political issues.
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They tend to vote at higher levels.
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They also come out with more respect for the people they disagree with.
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And there's an increase in trust in institutions as a result of this also.
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And not just at the end of the weekend, but months later.
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And all of these civic effects we find almost regardless of topic.
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And we also find them with the online process we've developed,
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which makes the whole process much more accessible and cost-effective
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because you don't need human moderators, you don't need the
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travel, the hotels.
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Do they still bond?
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They do, to my surprise.
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They do.
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It has the same civic effects, downstream?
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It does.
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It does.
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We've demonstrated that in peer-reviewed scholarly journals.
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And it has the same lasting effects.
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We did a big one on climate change that was with our online process.
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In the online process, people see each other, as you and I see each
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other, in small groups of 10, and there's no human moderator.
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The AI, empowers the people in the group to moderate the discussion,
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strange as that may sound, in the sense that there's a queue for
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talking of 45 seconds at a time, so nobody can dominate the discussion.
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It nudges people to sign up for the queue if they haven't signed up.
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People wait their turn and prepare for their comment on that proposal
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so they choose their words carefully.
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It intervenes if people are being, uncivil and puts that issue to the group.
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It guides the people in coming up with their key questions.
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It asks them to type them in or speak them into a process where everybody
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can see them on the screen and they can be edited, by the others, and
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then they agree on a version of that.
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Then they vote for the top questions, the top two are taken to the agenda
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for the plenary session with the experts.
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The AI moderator is able to keep this a very neutral space?
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Right.
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And in fact, when the participants are asked, we give them the same
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evaluation questions afterwards that we have used for years for the
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human moderators, and the AI, gets ratings at least as high as the
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human moderators do for balance.
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Have we discussed the competing sides of all the questions adequately?
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Is there any bias, etc.?
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The AI always, comes out at or near the top.
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I'm assuming you use the Stanford engineering talent to develop that?
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That's right.
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It's a collaboration with them, and they're great
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And given the latest news, I have to ask this question: Is there a
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way to seal off this process so, the AI moderator doesn't take it on
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their own bat to, reinterpret the instructions they're given?
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No, no.
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No, it's not in the direction of agentic AI, rather it's AI assisted
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There's a whole series of tasks that a human moderator
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would do that this AI does.
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And it has a voice, the voice of my associate, Alice Siu, the
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Associate Director of my lab.
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She has a pleasing voice.
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And it's not agentic AI that could
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independently take over the process.
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Very good.
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And you can imagine with this online platform that you have and, and
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demonstrated in many places and in many contexts, it's all in the
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book, with the AI moderator, that this can be scaled to some degree.
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And I just wondered if you could talk a bit about that.
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I know you're involved in national experiments in this, and it'd be
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great to hear a bit about that.
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Yes.
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Well, that was--
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So my idea, which I argue for in the book after I review the implications
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of deliberative democracy, on the model that we've designed, which
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is different from other models that other people have developed later.
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On our model, we get a great deal of increased mutual respect. We
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get very dramatic depolarization of party differences, and, we
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get effects on how people vote.
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In both directions?
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Yes. [In US] It's not the Republicans change, but
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the Democrats change too.
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And they listen to each other. And the
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good reasons, I think, can be used as a route to responsible advocacy
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because these are the reasons that a representative sample of the people
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would accept & support, that have weight with the public once they know about it
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And I imagine media coverage must
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be quite important to help with legitimacy, and for the public to
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understand how the whole process worked
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Yes.
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It is important.
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And, it's easier to get media coverage if it's face-to-face than online.
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Yes.
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But the online process with the results sometimes has had good coverage too.
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And we've done this in many countries.
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It's even required by law in in one country where we used
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it to change the constitution.
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I should tell you about that.
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Mongolia right?
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That's right.
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That's right.
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They use it for constitutional change.
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Could we maybe speak a moment about the national scaling?
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Okay.
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So my idea was the limitation of the process is that only the people drawn
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for a deliberative poll, only those in the sample, are directly affected.
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And so, what about everybody else?
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Well, wouldn't it be nice if they could have a similar experience, particularly
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since we found that the composition of the small groups doesn't actually
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matter so much for the changes.
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It doesn't matter for the direction of changes.
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The initial composition might vary, but if you had self-selected
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groups, nevertheless, you would get mostly changes in the same
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direction or that seems to be what we found in a lot of experiments.
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It points to the perception of legitimacy: the initial rep. sample
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- Well, yes.
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I think it's essential.
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It's essential if you're going to make policy recommendations to have
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a representative sample, which is my problem with many of the citizens
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assemblies, which, even in Ireland and in France at the national level,
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they didn't collect information re where people started on the issues.
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You didn't know if the conclusions were the result of the deliberation or
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how much of the conclusions were the result of the people who volunteered
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themselves to be part of the discussion.
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So I think that, although I thought the, actual… Anytime you get
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ordinary people deliberating together, the results can be quite wonderful.
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But I think that it's better to have a more rigorously recruited sample.
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But because of the byproducts of deliberation
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The civic effects
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Yes.
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I've had my idea for some time on the idea of scaling the process.
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So, there's a project, in the UK, that's led by two retired
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government officials, it's called the National Strategy.
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Catherine Day and Sir Matthew Rycroft have organized this.
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They're a great team, and they've brought in all kinds of people,
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including a group at Cambridge to be involved in this project, and
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I've done a lot of travel to the UK.
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But the idea would be to identify key challenges facing the future of the UK
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and prepare deliberative polls about them.
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But once we have the deliberative materials, to also foster scaling
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of the deliberation, with those same materials,
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with as many collaborative organizations as we can recruit.
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And we're in the midst of raising the money for that.
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But now that it's sort of gone public, I can talk about it,
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and, we're working on it intensively.
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However it's constructed, the civic effects just the civic effects alone,
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fantastic, that that happens routinely
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Yes, I think so too.
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And that's one of the arguments.
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So instead of thinking our divisions are intractable and democracy's
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hopeless for getting anything done, we've examples all over the world.
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We've done 160 deliberative polls around the world, and many of them
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have had impacts on policy as strong or maybe even more dramatic than
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those Texas ones that you dug out of my past.
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And sometimes on issues that seemed, you know, very difficult.
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And in fact, in some countries, the more difficult the issues,
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the more attractive it is to share responsibility for a solution with
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the people because, because there's going to be, you know, some negative
24:00
fallout no matter what you choose.
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And so if you bring the people into the decision process in a
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representative and thoughtful way, which is what we think we can do,
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Yes
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you can help lay out the direction for a solution.
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And can I ask about how AI intersects with this work and can
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help enable scaling and just any comments you wanted to make about that?
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The platform we have is AI-assisted, and like everything with AI,
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it changes by the month or by the day, you know.
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In other words, with all kinds of improvements.
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But people like the platform.
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You have transcriptions
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- An automatic transcription, and then we have large language models that
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help us understand the reasons, the arguments for and against, that people
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are using for each of the proposals.
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And so when we want to explain why people change their views or why they
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came to the conclusions they did, we normally or previously relied
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upon the questionnaire, explanatory variables we could anticipate and
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put in the pre and post questionnaires.
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But now we can actually look at the reasons that people use
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during the process, and that adds a lot, in each small group.
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It combines the qualitative and the quantitative in a systematic way.
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So we can understand why people conclude what they did about proposals
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Would you mind speaking a little bit to the shy citizen?
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If a shy citizen is caught up in the random sampling, and they're
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selected, part of the weekend, they're interested in it, said
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they'd agreed to it, but they're not great at group discussions.
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I know you said the AI nudges everybody that hasn't contributed.
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But I wonder, have you noticed any effects for people like that who
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perhaps- there's always questions how some people can effortlessly
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communicate, and a tendency some times they can dominate discussions 415 00:26:10,736 --> 00:26:14,396 And I just wonder how your model counters those effects.
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Well, we know the number of seconds that each… Or if it's on the
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platform, or when we record the face-to-face ones, it's the same.
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But we know the number of seconds that each person participates,
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and the participation is pretty equal, pretty equal by every kind
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of metric that you can devise.
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After a while, people learn to listen, and they get involved.
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And,if somebody suggests an issue that becomes a group question the norm
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is it's the person who first suggested the issue, who ends up participating
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in voicing the question in the plenary session before hundreds of people.
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And there was one case where a woman in the UK, didn't get to ask
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her question because time was running out.
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And she held up her hand and insisted that she ask it, and she
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did, and it was a good question.
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But the moderator of her group told me that at the
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beginning of the process, she couldn't get her to say anything.
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She was so shy.
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But by the time she'd been selected by the group to do this question, and she
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had practiced how she would articulate it, she wanted the chance to do it, by
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golly, she was going to do it, and she did.
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Having the group behind her was empowering, they thought it was a
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really good question, and it was.
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So, I think that that's not too unusual, that the process brings out
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viewpoints from everybody.
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And, it doesn't mean that everybody has to talk exactly the same,
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although very often they do.
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What it means is we ... we all know that, that sometimes,
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there are occasions where some people talk too much and
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have less influence as a result.
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But the platform is even better than the human moderators at
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evening out the discussion, in terms of how long people talk.
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And,if you have a civil atmosphere, and very quickly the people who might
28:22
under other circumstances disrupt the discussion, learn, pick up on the idea
28:28
that that's not what this is about.
28:31
This is about listening as much as talking, and contributing
28:34
when you have something to say.
28:37
Can I ask you with all of your experience around the world, is there
28:40
a particularly inspiring process that you've witnessed or been part of that
28:44
you'd like to share with listeners?
28:46
We did a project in Bulgaria, about the condition of the Roma.
28:51
This was a big national project.
28:53
And, there was this New York Times reporter who showed up,
28:57
Nicholas Wood was his name.
28:59
And he wanted to see the moderator training and every aspect of it.
29:02
And I said, "Great. Here." And so we invited him to that.
29:06
And then he happened to say "I showed up because I knew you would fail."
29:11
"What?" He said: "Well, you've no idea how strong the antipathy
29:16
is to the Roma, this is going to be an intractable problem."
29:22
So I said, "Well, let's see." I mean, I didn't know.
29:24
It's an empirical study.
29:25
So, we had 6% Roma in the sample, which was as best social scientists could
29:34
judge was the appropriate number.
29:36
And,
29:37
As a representation in the wider population
29:39
Yes.
29:40
Exactly, exactly.
29:41
And we had this thing unfolding in this big auditorium that was
29:47
left over from the Soviet era days.
29:50
And it was nationally televised, and we had the prime minister
29:54
opening the process as a welcome.
29:57
And, the people moved dramatically, in support of the Roma.
30:01
For example, on, because it was about, the schooling, housing,
30:06
and the criminal justice system.
30:08
All of which, greatly disadvantaged the Roma.
30:11
And on the schooling, there was a big movement, in favor of closing
30:17
down the Roma-only schools.
30:18
Roma schooling was segregated.
30:20
Yes
30:22
And actually busing the children to schools with everybody else.
30:25
And the overall population, and the Roma themselves, supported that,
30:32
because their kids weren't learning anything.
30:33
They didn't even have teachers in the schools.
30:35
They had the older children were teaching the younger children.
30:39
And it was in the Roma language, not the Bulgarian language, so how could
30:44
these children have any real future?
30:48
Prospects
30:48
And, at a conference later about our projects all over Eastern Europe,
30:53
the Bulgarian group was ecstatic because they had just decided to
30:58
desegregate the Roma-only schools.
31:01
I'm not saying we were entirely responsible for it, but everybody
31:05
admitted that we were a catalyst, that this was a surprising result
31:09
that such a thing could be possible.
31:11
And so I'm rather proud of that.
31:14
Because it showed that people could overcome their
31:19
initial stereotypes and prejudice.
31:23
And so he wrote, there's an article in The New York Times he wrote, which
31:27
was very favorable about deliberative polling, and included interviews
31:30
with the prime minister as well, and about the future of this process.
31:35
So we have that on our website.
31:37
Marvelous.
31:37
uh
31:38
Jim.
31:39
If there's anything else you wanted to share about Deliberative Polling with
31:42
our audience before we finish today?
31:45
Just that, we've done this over and over, in contexts where people
31:50
said it wouldn't be possible.
31:53
There are great divisions.
31:54
There was the Bulgarian issue about the Roma, but we've
31:58
done it in Northern Ireland.
32:00
We've done it in developing countries where,
32:04
I had trouble getting it off the ground because there were early experiments
32:08
in deliberative democracy, not on my model but on other models where,
32:13
some American researchers concluded that deliberative democracy might be
32:17
great for developed, highly developed countries but it wouldn't work in Africa.
32:23
And, I eventually succeeded in getting a collaboration across Africa
32:28
called the Resilience African Network, and it was, supported by USAID.
32:33
We did projects in Uganda, Ghana, Senegal, Malawi.
32:39
Malawi may be the poorest country in Africa.
32:42
Tanzania
32:43
And in every case, we made some adjustments to the process in the sense
32:48
that we had much more extensive video versions of the briefing materials
32:52
and we had oral administration of the questionnaire, so they didn't have
32:55
to fill out a written questionnaire.
32:57
But otherwise, the process was just the same.
33:00
And the people were very smart, and the local governments implemented the results
33:06
So, I think that everywhere we go, the people have the capacity to deliberate
33:14
together about their common problems.
33:17
And you just have to make the effort so that
33:20
you can bring the competing choices and arguments to life in a responsible
33:25
evidence-based way, and create a civil environment for a microcosm
33:30
of the people, to grapple with the issues and question competing experts
33:34
It works over and over, and has salutary effects.
33:38
And I think that's what democracy is ultimately about.
33:42
It's about connecting the will of the people to what's actually done.
33:46
And it can be done, because otherwise you end up with a form of democracy
33:50
which is just attack ads & vilification spread online to people who never hear
33:57
the other side because they're caught in their enclaves or filter bubbles
34:02
for the viewpoints that they find congenial.
34:04
And democracy just becomes a matter of mobilization.
34:08
That version of democracy is destined for deadlock, for not
34:13
solving the people's problems.
34:15
And that doesn't match up well to the threat of authoritarianism,
34:20
which, some people believe, can get things done, and a strong man
34:25
can solve the people's problems.
34:28
I don't believe that at all.
34:29
But we need more than just party competition democracy.
34:34
We need party competition democracy with opportunities for deliberation,
34:40
by the people, and opportunities for those deliberations to be consequential.
34:44
So that's the theme of my book.
34:47
Some of the people in this space of deliberative democracy have gone to
34:52
the point that they want to get rid of elected representatives and, just
34:56
replace them with random samples of the public, and I don't support that.
35:01
What I support is - people have died for the right to vote in
35:04
elections - and I support making our representative democracy function so
35:12
that it connects to the public will.
35:15
And that's what my book is about.
35:17
And to do that, we need not just on particular occasions,
35:21
but we need lots of occasions.
35:23
And we need to bring deliberation into schools as a form of civic education.
35:28
We need to spread it more widely in all kinds of contexts
35:32
Wonderful to start those civic effects in the young.
35:35
Yes
35:36
As you argue so eloquently in your book, it's a complement
35:39
to parliamentary democracy
35:42
That's what I think
35:44
it should become
35:45
We certainly need it.
35:47
Thank you.
35:47
Thank you, Jim.
35:49
My pleasure