Project title
Algorithms for Large-Scale Deliberative Democracy
Research question
If strong modern democracies need to be digital, how can we make sure that the algorithms powering digital democracy applications really adhere to democratic principles? How can we develop digital democracy algorithms that we can trust to be truly democratic?
Project description
Deliberation has always been considered a central feature of democracy. As first argued by philosophical work in deliberative democracy, and more recently by work in the social and economic sciences, as well as AI, deliberative processes can be an effective tool to overcome polarization and create common ground in groups. Because of this feature, deliberation has formed the cornerstone of several recent experiments in democratic participation such as citizens’ assemblies. Yet effective deliberation seems to remain a prerogative of small groups. If we want ideals of deliberative democracy to impact society at large, deliberative processes should be made to scale online. How could large groups (e.g., neighborhoods, cities, even entire societies) deliberate? Any answer would inevitably involve a level of algorithmic support. The challenge is therefore to develop algorithms that can realize ideals of deliberative democracy on a large scale. How such algorithmically supported deliberation could be developed in a transparent and principled way is the focus of my fellowship.
Selected publications
- M. Los, Z. Christoff, D. Grossi. Proportional Budget Allocations: Towards a Systematization. IJCAI’22
- M. Michelini, D. Grossi, A. Haret. Collective Wisdom at a Price: Jury Theorems with Costly Information. Proceedings of IJCAI’22
- Y. Zhang, D. Grossi. Tracking Truth by Weighting Proxies in Liquid Democracy. Proceedings of AAMAS’22
- Y. Zhang, D. Grossi. Power in Liquid Democracy. Proceedings of AAAI’21
- E. Elkind, D. Grossi, E. Shapiro, N. Talmon. United for Change: Deliberative Coalition Formation to Change the Status Quo. Proceedings of AAAI’21
- D. Bloembergen, D. Grossi, M. Lackner. On Rational Delegations in Liquid Democracy. Proceedings of AAAI’19
- Z. Christoff and D. Grossi. Binary Voting with Delegable Proxy: An Analysis of Liquid Democracy. TARK’17, EPTCS 251, 2017, pp. 134–150.