How Can Collective Intelligence Enhance Democracy with Bella Roberts
This conversation is part of a series of bi-monthly community calls hosted in the Life Itself online community if you would like to join future calls join us in our Whatsapp Community
In this call Bella will discuss how we can save our broken democracy. Through the proliferation of disinformation, fake news and now generative AI, it is even harder to know the "truth". In this mired information environment, it is difficult to make good decisions, especially during election time once every few years where we get to exercise the main democratic tool available to us. In a deliberative democracy, our voices matter more than our votes. Through deliberation, consensus can be built through shared understanding, trust and empathy. Collective intelligence describes a form of collective decision making, which is being increasingly enabled by technology - allowing people to participate at scale, from any location. However, deliberative technologies are soon becoming able to not only summarise, but recommend and predict what we say; therefore blurring the lines of agency between human input and that of AI.
How can we harness these technologies to empower the people and restore democracy, before it’s too late? Bella promises that she wrote this blurb, not ChatGPT.
The Conversation
In the conversation we cover:
Chapters
- 00:02:29 Shifting the definition of democracy from votes to voices.
- 00:08:06 The power of the people speak platform.
- 00:13:27 Generative AI and the human experience.
- 00:19:52 Epistemic growth empathy and empowerment.
- 00:25:00 Talking until there's nothing left. [
- 00:30:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfZRozLtyEU&t=1823s) Why is the culture of dialogue important?
- 00:37:02 The role of embodiment in online participation.
- 00:42:47 The role of representation and empowerment.
- 00:48:55 Power from within vs power from among.
- 00:54:40 How do we develop emotional literacy?
Links from the conversation
- https://newpublic.org/
- https://www.ccc.mit.edu/
- https://convergentfacilitation.org/
- https://29k.org/
- https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/therapy-types/acceptance-and-commitment-therapy
About Bella
At the start of 2021, Bella decided to run for election for the London Assembly, leaving behind a decade in the finance industry. This was the first year that the UK had officially left the EU and we were in the midst of the COVID pandemic with no vaccine rollout plan. Everything seemed highly uncertain, and unpromising, but she wanted to take a stand. Like many others, she felt that the people had no say and were not represented by those in government. Following this experience, she embarked on a Masters in Digital Politics which included modules in AI and philosophy, leading her to present her main research project to you in this community call. Bella also studied the last two terms of her Masters course remotely in Bali.
