This seminar will be delivered by Rolf Kleef and chaired by Dr Caitlin Bentley

Last year we experienced the breakthrough of Large Language Models (LLMs) to the general public. Parallel with the hype of expectations, a global discussion started on the risks and ethics around these models. Companies, governments, and civil society want ways to "align", "regulate", or "govern" the technology.

One of those companies, OpenAI, set up a "Democratic Inputs to AI" grant programme, and selected ten projects to work together on ideas and tools for "collective governance of AI".

In this presentation, Rolf Kleef will share experiences and insights from "Deliberation at Scale" (D@S), one of the projects that participated in the programme. D@S developed a platform to let hundreds of people discuss statements, in rotating video calls in groups of three, moderated by AI.

The talk will share reflections on the programme and the relation to wider societal discussions around internet technology, from big questions, like "what does democratic input even mean?" and "can AI help us to talk about AI?", to the more practical, like "how can we describe hypotheses and approaches of such projects, so that we can compare results?".

About Rolf Kleef

Since his graduation in computer science and knowledge engineering in 1992, Rolf Kleef has been helping civil society organisations and governments embrace and use new internet technologies, to improve online collaboration and policy-making. As a sociotechnical engineer, trainer, and facilitator, he has been involved in designing processes and developing online platforms for discussions, communities of practice, open data, and now AI-assisted deliberation.

Location

K0.20 King’s Building (Anatomy Lecture Theatre)

Strand Campus - King's College London (kcl.ac.uk)

STAI CDT Seminar: From Talk of the Town to Deliberation at Scale