So thank you for your time. Thanks. Thanks for inviting me.

Yeah. Citizen Foundation is a a nonprofit civic tech foundation, and we're actually two nonprofits. We're a nonprofit in Iceland. We're also Citizens Foundation in America and The US. And it started in 02/2008. I was actually in London, living in London at the time. And the financial crisis hit the world. Iceland was sort of an early, quite a visible victim. And, over a period of time, you know, the news were all about Iceland being bankrupt and so on and so on. And, you know, going on a taxi ride in London, you know, talking to the taxi drivers, they'll go, oh, you're from Iceland? You're so unlucky. Your your country is bankrupt. You know? Well, actually, it didn't turn up that really that bad in the end. You know? But but, at the time, there was this overwhelming feeling in Iceland, where, trust in government and the parliament, so it plummeted down to 6%, where Iceland has one of the oldest parliaments in the world, founded in the year 09/1974, so, like, over a thousand years old. And over a thousand years, we've had, like, pretty good trust in the parliament, but but it plummeted from, like, 70% down to 6% over a period of two weeks. And then it was this overwhelming, idea that or concern that, like, government decision making when it came to, like, the financial crisis and the banks in Iceland and all of that. And then a wider society also in the rest of the world and at least the Western world and, like, in The UK where it's there and the The US where this idea of government was just not really in control of what was going on anymore. And, it was certainly in Iceland. And, and, we had this idea, with a group of people, Gunnar Grimsson, mainly, who was my partner also when we started the first Internet service company in Iceland in 1993, and, and some other people from that time. And we have this idea to start, a civic tech nonprofit, to help create technology to enable better decision making, in society between governments and citizens and so on. So so, and we've always been using a lot of open source software. We and the and promoting and creating open source software. So, and and the basic idea, how can we enable, by using technology, Internet, and AI, all the technologies, how can we help governments and citizens make better decision in an increasingly more sort of complicated world?

and so on. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in terms of, like, I I mean, like, when did that happen, you mean? Like

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And and the thing I mean, I was I was 21 when I when I started the Internet, you know, company in, you know, in '93. And I, you know, the and I have been on the Internet, like, since 1987 or '88 and, you know, on the tax based Internet. But then when the web came and and we started this Internet company, there was a lot of idealism on how, this increased communication could give, people a stronger voice in society and, like, how how, even in a utopian way, how the Internet and cyberspace could really, like, transform our, social and control structures and make, society fairer and more equal and all of that. So, yes, I mean, I was definitely a part of it, you know, was that. And and also when we started the Internet service company then then, you know, I've been helping schools connect to the Internet, and I was at the teacher's university. There's a big computer there, and and I downloaded the first web browser called Mosaic. And I I tested it. I've been on a text based Internet for years. And I tested it. I've I've had my friend there, and we're like, wow. I mean, this is like the future. And so we actually, downloaded the first sort of public Linux operating system called Slackware on, like, 20 diskettes like that, you know, and, for free. You know? I mean, it was not it was like Linux, you know? And and we set up eight telephone lines in my friend's living room. And, so, and we set up the Internet provider there. I mean, using all this open source software as well. So so the idea in 02/2008, you know, both to, this idea of the Internet, you know I mean, in 02/2008, there was not really you know, like, the Internet hadn't really delivered. You know? Yes. It had given a lot of people a voice, but when it comes to actually giving people a voice in the in government decision, we can so on. There was almost no you know, none of that. So both that, but also, you know, just in general, I don't know how, like, open source, you know, community based things, you know, can really you know, Linux showed us that. The Internet showed us that. You know, that that you can actually have grassroots open source and so on, like, really have make big changes in society. And that was also the reason why we decided that as we're gonna be working with citizen governments to build up trust, we couldn't be a company, a for profit company. We have to be a non profit nonprofit foundation because otherwise, we wouldn't have the have the right alignments and right, you know, sort of yeah. You know, we can yeah. So yeah. And,

yeah, what is it? Well, you know, yeah, no. I think Internet is still, absolutely a place of, like, freedom, you know, in a way, but but it's also obviously a a place of surveillance. And, like, there's different types of Internet, you know, and we have different types of surveillance in different places of the world and so on and so on. In some places, it's like it's highly monitored and, like, not really free at all, like, you could say, like, for free thought and so on. But I think, like, Internet, like everything else, like technology sort of just reflects the society that they are embedded in.

Yeah. I mean, I mean, we we we started when we thought, like, okay. So how can we use the Internet to improve the system? So very quickly, things about, like, e democracy came up, collective intelligence, a guy called Stephen Clift, who was, coined the term e democracy, and and bunch of, you know, random people, academics and so on, that were trying different things. And and, and the but it but the basic idea is that if you have a complicated decision, and in the modern world, increasingly more complicated decisions with competing demands, you know, and what you what's considered a good decision today is maybe not exactly the same as a good decision twenty years ago. You know? Like, it's evolving. It's it's you know? There's a lot of you know? And and that's fine. Society is solving. We see that decisions should evolve as well and not be better. You know? But this idea is if you're doing a a a complicated decision or a decision making process that is gonna affect, you know, a large group of society, that actually by reaching out at the right time when you're creating the policy, out to citizens to actually get information, to get, like, and this basic principle is that we're gonna make the decision better with better information. So, like, better information make better decisions. I think, like, a few people can, you know, argue against that. You know, that's even, like, properly sort of handle some way mathematically proven you, and you know that that, you know, more information is is gonna give you, you know well, not more, but better information. So so that's the sort of core of the idea, you know, you know, in terms of that's the utilitarian part of the idea. And that's how we, like, you know, sell it to government in a way. But, obviously, there's also this democratic, angle of it. Is that actually, you know, what makes a good decision a good democratic decision is something that is gonna be balancing the competing interests of, of the voters and the people who are living in the society that the that the rule or regulation or law or decision, whatever, is being created. You know? So so, and, you know, this can be, like, small things, you know, like participatory budgeting, where you're gonna put, like, a playground there or, you know, an outdoor cycling park or whatever, things like that. You know, and there's a lot of good examples that where people have empowered all around Europe and the world with participatory budgeting. And they but also, policy, like, for example, education policy, you know, and, you know, all sorts of traffic policies and all sorts of policies that are often in where you have many different stages of the participation, where, like, you know and the and then, for example, Scottish Parliament where, you know, the platform and this idea is embedded into the into the committees of the Scottish Parliament that they've been doing, like, really groundbreaking work, leading the world in many ways, when it comes to engagement. They have, like, a an an engagement unit. They take it very seriously. They're very professional. And they effectively offer, like, a service to the different committees to say, like, also, yeah, we have this. Do you need the information from the people, like, from from the public? I mean, you're taking this decision. And, and then the community say, oh, yes. We need the information. Okay. When do you need it? And then the engagement goes. It's like it's like a way of, you know, actually delivering real value to, the the elected representatives in the committees by getting good information to them, you know. And, and and this is, sort of proven itself many, many times. And it's just two examples, three examples of many very, very varied type of how engagement can sort of, you know, both lead to better decisions, but also, you know, also empower people democratically because they can improve the decision themselves in a way by taking part.

Yeah. I mean, I mean, obviously, anything is sort of possible, you know, in the future. And the but but I think, like, you know, democracy, you know, the law and everything, you know, how it all sort of connects together, I think that, you know and the norms that people are used to. And there's all sorts of different things that, like, you know, need to all sort of change together in a way for, you know, like, some, like, really major changes to the system. And one of the things that's come very much up in our, work, yeah, past seventeen years is is is, you know, direct democracy. And and we have, you know, taken, you know, stances that, like, there's, like, a there's a spectrum of things or decisions where, you know, direct democracy can work today. You know? It's like and I think that's one of the things, like, this idea of that through, you know, proxy voting, for example, where you delegate the vote to certain it can be a parliamentary or whatever, where you can, or, you know, that you have the solutions with their democracy. I mean, we have this sort of through referentums, obviously, today in in US and Switzerland, obviously, famous for that. But we have taken the stand when it comes to technical democracy and sort of take the participation that that, that two things is that, you know, you know, how secure is it? Like, how how how secure are you doing it online? And we're lucky here in Iceland and in and in semi East Estonia, Nordic countries, Baltic countries, so on. And that a lot of people have electronic IDs. A lot enables, like, any type of their their democracy. Like, oh, it's just an enable of, you know if you don't have electronic IDs, you shouldn't be doing, like, direct democracy, have people vote on insecure platform about something, you know, important because, like, that's gonna be totally illegitimate. It it eliminated it. And it's gonna be like a you know, it's just gonna, you know, create distrust in democracy if people are voting on platforms that are not secure. So that limits already sort of a lot of places for for really doing any type of, you know, terror democracy. But, but we also, you know, sort of the where where we draw the line is sort of participatory type of of budgeting things, where where, you know, people are, like, voting for for some people, you know, first of all, in our better Reykjavik, you know, in better Reykjavik. And my neighborhood projects, you know, I've been doing, with with the city of Reykjavik, I don't know, for yeah. For since fifteen years now. And, and is that, when people have a chance to add ideas about to do in the neighborhoods, and then, you know, like, 1,700 ideas came a couple years ago. And, and then, you know, six months later, the government has sort of looked at the ideas and so on and so on, and they've costed them, professionals, with with cost. So then the people can vote with their electronic IDs on what ideas are gonna be then implemented in the neighborhoods. But if it was about, like, more of policy, then we have a totally, you know, different dimension where which is like, where does the power actually lie? Right? And the thing is that the power lies in those online things is by who knows about it. And how do you control who knows about it? Well, you do that through social media. And how do you control who sees what on social media? Well, you pay for it. You pay for it. So, basically, anything you do online, this is like direct democracy, which is like, we're voting on this. You know, we're going that way or that way. That's really like, you know, for us, it's like a you know, it's a line we don't cross with, you know, with our protest, and we always recommend against it is that, you know, even if you have e electronic IDs, you know, it's just like if it was a controversial issue, then and it's all online, you know, it it's just like, it's too easy to, you know and as we said, it's just a problem with the referentums in general. We've seen referentums go all sorts of different ways, you know, that are recently the last decade. You know? But anyway so but having said that having said that, then I think that, what we can see in the future is both we're gonna see AI help to, empower the organizational side on the government side. Because often the reason why there isn't participation is because lack of resources on the government side, lack of planning capabilities to actually incorporate the feedback and so on. So I think AI is really gonna empower that part. It's gonna increase the capacity of governments to actually, you know, work through good decision making, you know, exponentially. I think that's gonna grow a lot in the next just few years. But then also, with AI, is that it's gonna help to empower the citizens to for example, like, we're doing a new, iteration of Better Recovery, you know, later this year, and we have over 40,000 registered users. And we're gonna have, like, an AI assistant that is gonna allow people to, yeah. So, yeah. Actually, somebody's at the door here. Sorry. Can you can you take up but anyway, just to continue, I think that on the, you know, for the users of Better Lake. They'll be able to have this AI assistant that is basically gonna be watching out for their interest in a city. So if depending on the subject they are interested in, it's gonna be like, you know, your guardian. You know, that's gonna watch out for your interest. And that's gonna be, I think, both those aspects, both in terms of, more capacity at governments, and also more help for citizens. I think that's gonna be, really gonna help with the quality and quantity of, of, of citizens working with government and AI for better decisions. Okay.

Absolutely. You know you know, for sure. And I think that, you know, one of the things that we've we've done over the years is that we're sort of been, you know, especially after mobile phones became popular, like, in 02/1415, you know, where everybody certainly had a mobile phone was to is to, lower the barrier to participation, you know, both through technology and design. You know? So, you know, for example, you know, when you are, you know, visiting a government project, this course parliament or something. You know? First thing you see is, like, a nice image. You know? And then there's a very short description of of what's, expected. You know? And then you can see more through, like, a question mark. It's it's at a very simple user interface, which we also have done for sort of deliberations sort of instead of, when people see an idea, we we don't ask them to comment on it. We ask them, oh, do you wanna help us out? You know, we, you know, we're gonna find the best pros and cons for this idea. So we've gamified it as well. You know? And I think that's sort of, you know, part of the issue is, like, you know, if people have enough information, but also, you know, how the information is presented to them and and and, like, aren't they? And at what level or how do you break down the information? For example, you know, if you have a, you know, a a a law proposal you want comments on, you know for example, we did this, you know, the comments are thinking about some constitution changes, like 02/2019. And then we worked with them on our Better Iceland platform where they had to basically, we're gonna change, like, three parts of the constitution. And they have, like, four different things they wanna change in each or something. And so, well, you could have put up a big PDF with all the legal text. Right? And said to people, hey. You know? Yeah. Give us your comments. But we knew that would never work. So while we did this, we on our platform, we created, like, this front page where you have, like, you know, the three top little subjects with a nice image, very short text, you know, nature. You know? It's not like you click on nature. And then there's, like, four things that the government wanted to do in the constitution connected to nature. Very clear. I mean, almost lower the barriers to almost everybody understanding it. You know? Like, in terms of deals, it's just that simple. But compared to the PDF with the actual law proposal, I mean, that's just like, you know, that's that's sort of a barrier of 90% of people can't deal with it. You know? And we lowered it into, like, maybe 90% of people can process it because it's been broken down like that. So so, you know, so that's also important. But I think when it comes to the information part itself, I think already AI is sort of that people are using chat with search or plot or whatever. That is both, like, doing searching for you. It knows your preferences. It it's, like, on your side in a way in terms of, like like, when you get a subscription to Chat2BT, you know, at least now there's no advertisers or anybody. It's just you and the model. So in theory, it should be on your side in terms of, like, you know, it should know your preferences and so on and so on. But what we're doing with our, agent for, for better ranking, we can for for your priorities is that that's gonna look out for your interest online. I mean, we are actually gonna build it, like, in this open source way, obviously. I'll be using well, you can use a range of different models, but but we're gonna build it in that way. And I will definitely you can basically you know, the model will you say, those are my interests when it comes to the city. You know, those are my needs. You know? I'm this old. I'm like, I have those children or those things. You know? I'm those two ages, and I have dark or whatever. And then the AI will help you to to find that information part. Because, like, the thing about, like, not having the information, I mean, if you, if you only take, like, thirty years ago, I mean, you would have some people who would be, like, who just read all the paper that recognize that. There are two papers that came out every day. We just have all the information. Right? You know? Some people will not read the paper. You know, they would I don't know. They would make consider it, like, not really being up to date or anything. But today, it's like it's totally different. This is, like, totally just, like, information coming from everywhere. Some of it is true, some not. You know? So about having the information has changed a lot in terms of because society, we were just there's just so much information. So I think AI is the solution to help us to deal with that overload.

Yeah. So very very short on my academic records, but but I I actually started to, you know, my my father is an electric engineer, and my mother is an entrepreneur. So my father was early into computers. I guess I was a bit hyperactive. So so he got me programming at nine, you know, so it's a computer called the ZAAT Microprofessor. It's like a training computer for universities where he could, like, program in, like, in just numbers, you know, play songs and stuff. So and I got really an interest in that. I sort of spent all my energy. I got really excited about it. And so I actually sold my first piece of software in 1984. It was like a ticket to news feed that we put in information, and they would, like, scroll them up in, like, a teletext view. So used by the Iceland department in a big media strike in 1984. And the and the, I saw them the first AI program in 1987. In in a program language called ProLog, and, like, an AI expert system. And then, you know, I I took took some break from computers. I was, I worked in seven feature films as a sound engineer. I spent a year as a substitute lighting director for the Icelandic Opera, all things, doing club promotion, importing records, all sorts of things like that. But then, I've been sort of side jumping in the after you after I think education network was a sort of a a pioneering Internet network for teachers, and those helping them connect, schools to the Internet. And and that was at the point that I mentioned earlier where I saw at the teacher's university, the Mosaic browser, and we just decided to start this ISP because, you know and so I was back in that, then I then in in '95, I started the first, first of two ISPs in Denmark. And, then I was in, mostly in, sort of traveling between, in a loft in San Francisco, where I, started the video game company, got the Norbit entertainment, with some great people, my brother, Evan, Josh, others. And and I did a really exciting AI project back then, which was, an AI agent chatbot in 2001 for, an artist called Lynn Hirschman. So she had just done a movie called Technolust, with the Tilda Swenson playing three AI agents. So you see, this is in 02/2001. You know? And as he came to me, after in Orpeth's office and said, like, hey. How this AI agent, like, in my movie, can you put her online and, like, on the Palm Pilot? I was like, okay. Yeah. Well, we did that. And it was actually, an exhibition in the San Francisco Museum of Monarch for a year, And including those in lobby, you could take your PalmPilot, which is an early handheld device, and and you could actually beam the chatbot into your PalmPilot using infrared light. And, so so, and then I moved to London, after the after the dot com crash and doing video games, you know, three d games on mobile phones and, and many other things. We won a couple of afterwards. And then in 02/2006, I decided to, you know, take a break from video game industry. I started a fintech company working with hedge funds and financial institutions to do AI trading and, like, web platforms and things like that. And that was at that point in 2008 when the Citizens Foundation became an and, frankly, if I had still been in the video game industry, I would probably not have started the Citizens Foundation. But being in the financial world, gave me the opportunity to, you know, just make money so I could fund the foundation myself. And, and also this idea as earlier in terms of, you know, if I can use technology and AI to help, you know, rich people make more money, you know, like, why can't I also use technology, to make, society better and, like, you know, use technology for good? You know? So so I was sort of the so I've you know, since then, it's been the Census Foundation almost seventeen years, and and we've, developed your priorities very early on, our our sort of collective intelligence AI platform. But three years ago also started to work with the Northeastern University, person for social impact, on PolicySense, which is an AI agent library. And that's actually works now with your priorities. And AI agents, we've been using AI, like, last language model since 02/2019. And so, so, so I've been sort of living in that world for a very long time, and and the capabilities of AI has now been growing really fast the past five years. And so so we very much sort of have been slowly transforming all our platforms and technology to be sort of AI first, and I think that's where, like, the future is. You know?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. No. That that that is true because my father is an electric engineer, and and at some point, I know I was seven or eight. I I convinced my father that he has an FM transmitter. I convinced my father to have to let me use it with my cassette player and the little microphone. So I had my most cassettes, you know, and I was, like, doing, like I was at, like, a five, like, 500 meter or one kilometer radius. And all my friends were listening, you know, and they're flat, and I was, like, with my cassette player playing, like, you know, some music of the time, and this was back in 1979 or something.

Well, I've I've, you know, I don't know. To to be honest, you know, I my sort of, you know, view on it has sort of, you know, maybe shifted a little bit, but I've never really got into it in terms of, like, using it for, for, you know, anything to do with voting or things like that. The people have asked me, oh, do you support, like, Bitcoin voting order? And we always, you know, stay away from that. I mean, I I like the idea, and I think it's like, you know, the the ideology, you know you know, like, sort of place to sort of early Internet, you know, cyberspace of, like, you know, that it's like, that we can actually, you know, create those other control structures, you know, that are that are more fair and all of that. You know? So I like that, but it hasn't really happened like that. It hasn't really somehow, like, you know, be of any any, like, big use for, at least what I'm doing and what I do in terms of technology and society. I mean, that might change. You know? I mean, you know, I mean, as I said, the it's a good idea, but I I just haven't seen really the, you know, any, yeah, like, applications that are have convinced me that that, that, you know, because, like, even this whole decentralization thing and all of that, you know, is just all and over again, it's it's proven just like because, yes, in theory, you can have it, like, all untraceable and decentralized, but then, you know, humans are humans, so they're gonna leave their keys all over the place or whatever and whatnot. You know? And, like, and they have ways of of of, like, looking at the Bitcoin letter and knowing what's going on, you know, even you know? I will respect to catching criminals, I guess, you know. But but but but, yeah, it's it's not really fulfilling the the, original promise or not promise. I don't know if we, or maybe not a promise, but but the original things people projected on it.

Yeah. I mean, so so as we, you know you know, it's it's sort of basically around when there is a project going on, you know, in terms of that sort of most of the usage. When there is, like, let's say, a, you know, like, for example, right now, there's a consultation with the Scottish Parliament about HCA set you know, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. You know? And they, you know, and they started it, like, a a couple of weeks ago or or ten days ago. Already got, like, 700 responses. It's anonymous. You know? So it went, like, a lot of important things. And then so so thousands of people have come around and know about it, and they advertise it somewhere, something like that. And the and the so, you know, then people come and they participate, and then, you know, they get feedback, you know, potentially later. And then, you know, for example, in a city context, you know, there's, you know, you know, city is, you know, collecting a feedback on a new traffic policy, collecting ideas, you know, and people use it to, to, add ideas. And, and then, you know, we have this message like this deliberation, like, debate solution where we really managed to encourage people to, well, like, back in 2009 when we did our first pilot called shadow parliament. This is taking laws from the Icelandic parliament, giving people access to them. Then, you know, we just had a regular commenting system, like, you know, you know, you know, YouTube or Facebook, whatever, just, like, threaded comments. And in the first evening of the platform, we had to do laws about some fissory policy. We have those people in a horrible personal argument on our platform. The first evening we launched the platform, they were just like they were going at each other, like, personally. We were, like, just looking at this. It's like, oh, this is not gonna be simple, we thought. And it has not been simple, But what we, came up with and also got inspiration, you know, from, it was another great over source platform called Nation Builder by Tim, you know, and and a bunch of other university debates and so on. So we felt like, and and also my, experience in the video game industry is, like, like, to you know, because when you, are building a digital experience, like a website or a or an app or something or a web app, I mean, one of the secrets is, like, you as a developer are really in control of the experience. It's like when you have a computer game. You know? I mean, the player, you know, thinks the player is in control. I mean, the player is in control to to an extent, but it's mainly the game developer who designs exactly what the experience is gonna be. So same is applied to any, you know, digital technology. So, so yeah. So, yeah. So I think that was really important to, sort of get that right.

Yeah. I know. Absolutely. And I I think in terms of, like, I mean, I I mean, how the, you know, changes like, I mean, for example, I mean, even if it's a I mean, because we call this things like a gamification when you take, like, a small, like, gamified thing. But, also, we have this idea for the actual game. But but but yeah. But but but in terms of, like, you know, by instead of having comments, by having, like, asking people, like, oh, give us the we're finding the best, you know, pros and cons. Help us find them. We even get people putting both pro and cons. You know? Like, same same person. Right? And and there's almost never any arguments. Like, just by going into this new structure of design by and also you can't comment directly on somebody's house point. So you have to do a counterpoint or whatever. So that's worked really well. It sort of sold our and for our partners, like, you know you know, our government partners couldn't deal with it. It's like it was just anti's arguments coming. They were able to to read all those anti's arguments. You know? So but but so gamification can go a long way. But, actually, yes, we we do have an idea which we call it community, you know, community challenge. We actually applied for a Google graph, a google.org graph for it the other day. For us, we couldn't get that through, I think, and so but but we basically, it's an idea where, you know, governments or civil society can put forward challenges in a city or in a country, And then, a team of human players with AI agents work together to solve the problem, and they take on different roles. It's like a role playing game. So, like, there's a journalist role. There's an investigator role. There's, like, you know, the different roles in, like so you set up this little game if, like, it's it's like a game, but it actually has real, you know, you know, real things behind it. And and what's gonna enable it to work is the AI agents, Because the AI agents are gonna be able to keep the flow going. They're gonna be able to do the complicated things. They're gonna be able to do, you know, large scale web research, defend information, and and all of that. You know? And so yeah. So that's actually an idea we have on the table, but let's see. We we it's gonna cost, like, a a million dollars or something to develop, so one day. Maybe.

Well, you know, I I don't think it is hard to explain in terms of, like, you know, just how it works. I mean, it is very simple to use. And, like, for example, here in Iceland, as we have, you know, 40,000 drinks that do use in Reykjavik, but, you know, total probably 90,000 drinks that do use in the whole country because there are, like, fifteen minutes of pilots are using it. So, like, you know, one third of the country is, like, a platform, including the politicians and so on. So many people have used it. So it's a bit of a special special situation here in Iceland. You know? Just how many people have, you know, have used those sort of and this open source platform specifically. But, you know, it is really about the, you know, does it serve a need? You know? I mean, that's what we need to convince the politicians about. And but but the thing is it's not enough to convince the politicians because, like, you know, you also have to, you know, set it up so, the layers of bureaucracy, you know, that need to respond to it, you know, are it's gonna work there. Because, like, you know you know, any policy or decisions and so on is a very complicated, like, an interplay between, you know, like, on the city level, but also on the parliamentary level in terms of, like, you have the law, you know, you have the regulation, you know, and do you know, so, you know, and to have all those different levels of, you know, bureaucracy. So so, so, you know, there needs to be, like, the sort of, an internal you know, you need to converse, you know, politicians, but they also then need to have a practical plan that is gonna make make the participation work on the bureaucratic level. And one of the things that often the very simple thing probably kills most participation projects we know about. Budget. You know? That's it. Money. You know? Okay. And that's the reason why we started very early on with your priorities. We lost the cloud version, and our policy is there. It's that if you don't have money, you don't need to pay for using it. You know? It's but, I mean, we do charge some people. This is like a it's a voluntary thing. I mean, we're just gonna be a nonprofit. But this we have done on many of the successful probably 90 of the most successful your priorities projects, they did not pay us anything. You know? That we sort of got around the, oh, no. We have to we don't have money for their engagement platform. Well, hold on. The politician can say, well, it's free here. You know? Like, so, you know, so that's like a but but but that's the thing that, you know, you know, for, like, modern politicians, you know, smart people working in, municipalities and in government, I mean, most of them are already, like, think it's a good idea to actually get more information, you know, to get more information to make a better decision. You know? So it's usually not like a lot of convincing to do, you know, or explanation of how it works, but it's just everything else. But it's time, you know, also as well the complications that are that are not that are resulting in, you know, participation not happening.

Well, it started basically well, it's always been, like, a, you know, I mean, we we we we have different, groups of people, you know, at most, it'd been, like, five or something, you know, in different roles. It's mostly over the years been, like, for the first seven years, you know, I took no salaries, you know, from the foundation, you know. And then that's always been, you know, just like, you know, you know, I'm looking up also, you know, you know, generous grants, for example, from the EU, you know, from, from, yeah, you know, from all all the places and the and it's been, you know, but but it's it's always been like a passion project. So so several people have Gunnar Grimsson. He he was, recently with me when we found this in 02/2008. And, my my late friend, Josh Joshua, and, you know, my partner, Manuel, Doctor. Arson, Alexander, all these things. There's been, like, few people around that, that happened, like, mostly friends and family type of a thing. Because, like, when you don't have, like, dependable salaries to offer, then that's usually how, you know, you, people got to offer. But that's also great, you know, because, you know, friends and family are great, you know, like, in in most cases. And so, but, but, but yeah. So, you know, it's it's, it's obviously been, you know, a lot of the technology side where, you know, there's been a lot of technological development and AI development and things like that. And, and we partner with, for example, you know, we partnered with, first the CommLab, you know, and now Northeastern Center for Social Impact, And Beth Novak, who is lead has been leading those organizations. We partnered with her and her team in 02/2018. So and also partnership like the Scottish Parliament and many, many, many others. So we are, you know, just like bringing the technology component. So that's sort of our, sort of domain or scope, if you like. We don't, like, offer the service of, like, you know, going somewhere and setting up a democracy project for somebody or something like that. We that we have partners for that. We worked also before from with TEMSAK, you know, in the some from Brussels, in democratic society. We worked in many organizations like that. And ERCAS, the European Citizen Action Service. So that's sort of our we've been lean family, friends oriented, but there are a lot of partners that help us to, you know, scale up or or scale up the work.

Yeah. So, so, so really exciting project, with, you know, I'm actually gonna be presenting in San Francisco in in in in in August at OpenAI, which is a part of, future work, grant program of the GitLab Foundation. And, you know, GitLab is a, you know, you know, like a source control, cybersecurity, you know, company, and they have this fund called GitLab, you know, Foundation. And they we were one of the projects, that got funded, basically last year, which is, with Northeastern University where we're using AI and AI agents to help states to identify jobs, that are, requiring university degrees, but really should be skill based. So it's this idea of, you know, the problem being that there are all those jobs that go unfin unfulfilled often, and maybe some of them have too high education requirements. And so, so we use AI to help, you know, states, sort of optimize that process. And the and the yeah. And this has been, you know, you know, many other interesting, projects also in in this, cohort from GitLab Foundation. I mean, and and I think that's really, like, you can see in many places where just this idea of using AI for good. I mean, if if if nobody is funding it and, like, the product is not enough to have the ideas, and so it's really important, I think, for society to keep on funding in a non profit ideas for that. But another, interesting project, from a bit earlier in the year, we worked with, you know, with, you know, the cover up with the Northeastern University and the state of New Jersey where they're they are, basically, you know, we're we're we're undoing and and did a research on the job market. What what effect will AI, generative AI, have on the job market in New Jersey? So they have they have, like, this AI task force in New Jersey. So what we help them with is that, at first, to identify, sort of the root causes, sort of the problems. What are the root root causes of disruption of AI in New Jersey? So then, we, they both talked to experts, but we did, using our open source tools to large scale web research, looking at thousands of web pages and PDFs and so on to look for the real everything recent people have been talking about, what the fact AI will have on jobs. And then we have the list of a curated 200, items of, that that, you know, were, you know, potential sort of root causes or problems that need to be, dealt with. And then we put this into voting for the public or a prioritization by the public by the public using a tool called All Our Ideas, which we're also developing. And, where we asked people, what is the gonna be the greatest impact in the next five years of generative AI? And then a or b. And then people ask to vote in a sort of a pairwise manner. And we had 70,000 votes, and some of the top items were things like privacy. People are issue you know, conservative privacy rights. And and then we did the second stage where we actually used the AI AI also to help us come up with solutions to some of those problems. So so it's a very, you know, classic we've done many of those projects now in the past where we are mixing together AI, you know, both having the AI to research. We're doing, then, engagement with people at different stages. And then we, also are using AI also to help us, find solutions often and things like that.

Yeah. I think there's, you know, just in general, there are, you know, many people, you know, looking at how, you know, how to use, AI for good. And I think that's sort of, in general, that category of of projects, you know, is that, you know, as I say, I've I've been I saw the first AI program in, you know, thirty eight years ago, and I've been in AI ever since sort of more or less. And and just like the capabilities now, and the promise of AI to do good for society, that's at least as powerful and strong as the potential bad things AI can do for society. And the thing is that if we don't have the imagination to actually think about projects, to do good with AI, then the bad things will happen. And I think we, sort of, you know, in a bit, sort of missed the, you know, with social media, I think, in society. And we I was talking about this talking about this for years, but how we sort of how we how the approach we saw the social media, where we saw social media quite early on at this few years that there was potentially having some bad influence on different things in society, you know, and on our health and stuff. And then it just, like, it went on and on, and then this idea came on, like, oh, we're gonna regulate the social media. We're gonna put those rules on it. Like, and, like, we're gonna we're gonna just, like, gonna stop all the bad things happening with this technology. And what what we've been promoting and and we're still promoting in in general is that, yes, obviously, you wanna stop the bad things, but you also have to do good things. You have to do positive things, you know, that are you know, you have to have, you know, positive ideas and things that not only you can't just, like, try to stop the bat because, you know, you know, you can just slow down the bat maybe, but but you also have to have positive things. I think that's so important when it comes to sort of, like like, democracy projects is that we have this amazing opportunity now, you know, with, with AI to I mean, just, like, in terms of programming, I mean, I can do things now, like, literally 10 times faster programming wise with agents than I did, you know, two years ago. You know? 10 times faster. That's that is like, it's like 10 of me. So one year is ten years. I mean, think about that. You know? People are have an interesting idea for a protea to do something with $10 in democracy. You know? The barrier to entry for it is so much slower. And so so so maybe a bit long answer to your question, but, but the projects that I am actually excited about are the new projects that that the listeners are gonna be working on after this podcast. Okay.

Well, you know, I I think, you know, what what the AI does, you know, is that it empowers people with agency that that the this need or want to do something. So if you have this need to want to do something good, you know, now it's easier than ever in terms of just using the AI to do things for you and, you know, and and empower you and the small team, one person, two people, all of that. So and the wanting to do something, having a good idea about it, you know, and then being able to well, now about, like, in one year, two years to tell the AI to make the prototype. Oh, yeah. The design, everything. You know? Yeah. Absolutely. It'll it'll be great, you know, for sure. You know, in terms of, you know you know, I absolutely. I mean, the I mean, we are the design is a bit behind the core programming back end and stuff, but it's it's getting there. It will be there soon. So so so and that's also, like, with software. I mean, in the end, you know, all the software is is, is like a means to do something. You know? Like, it's the the software is is is is, like, there's there just to achieve some sort of a goal. And the but I think, you know, also, you know, we're already seeing that in in, you know, you know, in the job market where, with programmers, you know, in general that there are, there are, you know, well, there's many courses, but, I mean, we have there, like, you know, a lot of growth during COVID and all of that. But, well, a lot of people put everything into digital solutions. So it just seemed like, you know, not the stalling of that, but then the big companies have been not been hiring people like they usually do, but they've been letting people go. Like Microsoft let, you know, 9,000 people go a day. You know? And, you know, so, and there's this sort of advice, which is interesting. It's just like go and, you know, you know, start your own startup and stuff like that, and that's great. Yeah. People should do it if they have the idea. But I think there's also a huge scope also for in general to, you know, you know, with AI automating more and more and with the sort of traditional value, like, of the software itself, like, because it's so easy to create, maybe, like, the dollar value of it is is a bit less. That there's all almost, like, things in the civic tech world and then civil society that are, like, that are gonna make, like, you know, things better for people and or make the democracy better or whatever. I mean, those are, like, have huge rewards. You know, if you're going to do something like that and, like, you know, you're successful at it, or even if you're not successful, it is still highly rewarding. I mean, obviously, the, you know, pursuit of a start up and money and everything is absolutely fine. I totally have been there myself, but I'm just saying, you know, like, with this age of the with with AI, I have to think that in terms of, like I'm hoping also that, you know, you know, how resources and money and everything is distributed is gonna we have to change also. It's gonna be a challenge for for society and government to do that. But but I think, what matters is agency and creating real value. And there's so much so many things you can do with creating real value with civic tech and with with, like, digital democracy and, like, improving democracy because, you know, that could really, like, make, you know, people's life better. You know? You know what I mean? And it's just like a you know, it's a it's a and in the age of AI, I think, like, in terms of looking for meaning, you know, looking for, you know, purpose and all of that, there's, like, you know, there's definitely for some people is gonna be a, you know, will probably be a great path, you know, to go forward. You know?

Yeah. I mean, well, yeah, all the time. I mean, they're both software problems and there's, design problems. There's also service issues, you know, and, like, you know you know, one of the great thing about the, sort of part of that is that, you know, you know, the community of people who are working in the nonprofit civic tech world and so on, it's it's, you know, there's often con conferences, there's meetings, there's common projects, and so on where the essential part of sort of understanding the human aspects of all of it, you know, is is is, you know, is really, you know, often, you know, if you're just with your head in the code, you also need to understand, you know, the human aspects of it. But now, you know you know, with AI today, if I have a complicated programming problem, I have several options. You know? I I even, like, sometimes put up, like, ChattyPT, Gemini, and Cloud. I ask all the same questions, you know, like, I call it, like, my AI counsel. You know? And the I have an agent called Kotex. You know? I was also a ChatTBT OpenAI agent. There's a programming agent. I mean, now when I get bugs, reports, or whatever or a new idea for, like, small feature, I used to put it in, like, a task manager, project management system. But now most of them go straight into the Kotex agent. And and instead of, like, putting it on a list to do later, I just put it straight into agent, and it just does the feature, fixes the bug for me. So yeah. I mean, that's like, you know, but yeah. I mean, we, you know you know, the only thing is that we yeah. So yeah.

so Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, my message is this is, you know, is that that there's been like this, especially when it comes to, like, because the civic tax specifically, you know, that it's just like we have already, you know, are now transformed in a way of, just, how much capacity increase we can have as a small team, you know, using AI. You know? And I think that's just that's the message is that that, you know, and I I also on the funding side, you know, I I think, you know, as people, in the next few years, you know, as people realize, you know, when we see so much of our like this I mean, I've considered myself a programmer. Well, I have been a programmer, you know, since 1981 or whatever. And, like, you know, I have really worked hard at it. You know? I practiced a lot. You know? And I've become I became really good, you know, at my field, you know, despite hundreds of thousands of hours of practicing, whatever. You know? And this is what we humans do. We, you know, you know, we do that. But now, you know, I I have a access to AI agent that is, like, almost as smart as me. The next generation will be as smart or smarter. So and that's sort of I think, like but my worth and value, you know, is like it's it's a bit difficult to think about just because, like, I mean, it's been the the machine, the AI agent, the those neural networks that they are that they, you know, they're basically, you know, in a way, you know, taking my job. You know? But, but I think that, you know, the, the value, you know, in terms of what you can do in society, you know, it's like, that's gonna change in terms of, like, when we see see, sort of knowledge type of work, you know, being so highly automated. There's gonna be new things we're gonna wanna do. And I think, like, funding for making society better. I mean, I think that's definitely one of the positive potential outcomes that we can, you know, get out of this. And we basically have, like, two scenarios. We have, like, a a scenario where we have, like, 30% unemployment or more. Corporations, own everything. But we also have potentially a positive scenario where we have, like, the two day work week and plenty of resources for doing, projects connected to society because there's so much value there. I mean, there's just so much, like I mean, if you do, like, a a note taking app, yes, obviously, there's a value in that. But if you do, like, an app to, you know, help, you know, facilitate better things at your hospital or whatever, you know, I mean, that's like, you know, there's, like, there's so many things that are in society that are that have been underinvested in because of how the sort of the capitalist work, you know, world what works I guess mostly. I mean, in in The US, it's a strong cut, you know, you know, strong cut traditional civil society, you know, being well funded and so on. A little bit in Europe, not so much in Iceland. But, you know, at least that's my belief in that in terms of the values, why we start to really look at, you know, what's going on in around us, you know, and what is important. You know? And when we see, like, things that used to be very expensive like programming, you know, plummet down to almost zero, I think we're gonna see more with a clear eye what is important. And I think a lot of opportunities there for people to, tackle the civic tech, the digital democracy and so on.

it's Well, that's great. Just thank you for having me, and, and, yeah, I'm I'm sure we speak again.