Five dimensions of scaling democratic deliberation: With and beyond AI
As interest grows in AI's potential to transform democratic deliberation, the concept of “scaling” has emerged as a key aspiration - but what does scaling democratic deliberation mean and what is the role of AI in enabling it?
Join Claudia Chwalisz, Founder and CEO of DemocracyNext, and Sammy McKinney, AI and Deliberation Fellow at DemocracyNext and PhD student at the University of Cambridge, for the launch of their new DemNext paper exploring this timely question.
They will be joined by Oliver Escobar, Kyle Redman, and Manon Revel, and the discussion will be moderated by Andrew Sorota (bios below).
In this online event, they will discuss:
Why does 'scaling democratic deliberation' matter
Five dimensions of scaling democratic deliberation - scaling out, up, across, deep, and in
Why scaling democratic deliberation is not a technological challenge alone, but one that requires a diverse repertoire of technological applications to be combined with strengthened civic infrastructure
Don’t miss this opportunity to join the conversation and rethink what meaningful scale in democratic deliberation really looks like.
Speaker bios:
Claudia Chwalisz, Founder & CEO of DemocracyNext
Claudia has spent over a decade working on democratic innovation, beginning with research on populism and citizens' disillusionment with politics. She led the OECD’s work on innovative citizen participation from 2018–2022, where she developed the Deliberative Democracy Toolbox and co-authored key reports and standards. Claudia played a central role in designing the world’s first permanent Citizens’ Assemblies and has advised governments and institutions globally on deliberative processes. She is an Obama Leader (2023), and serves on advisory boards including the UN Democracy Fund and MIT’s Center for Constructive Communication. She is also the author of The Populist Signal and The People's Verdict.
Sammy McKinney, AI & Deliberation Fellow, DemocracyNext
Sammy is a PhD student in Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. His PhD research critically explores the integration of artificial intelligence into processes of public deliberation, especially citizens’ assemblies. This research expands on his master's thesis carried out at the University of Edinburgh, which he published in an adapted form in the Journal of Deliberative Democracy. Beyond academia, Sammy has facilitated AI governance courses for BlueDot Impact, co-developed ethical guidelines for AI in public deliberation with deliberAIde, and planned tech-enhanced conservation projects with partners from across the globe through Rainforest Connection.
Oliver Escobar is Professor of Public Policy and Democratic Innovation at the University of Edinburgh, where he focuses on participatory and deliberative democracy, political inequality, and future governance. He combines research and practice to support democratic and social innovation across public and community sectors. Oliver is Academic Lead on Democratic Innovation at the Edinburgh Futures Institute and has co-led several major projects, including What Works Scotland, Distant Voices, and the EU Horizon INSPIRE project. He has authored over 80 publications, contributed to 50 training courses, and co-edited the Handbook of Democratic Innovation and Governance and the forthcoming Climate Assemblies. Before entering academia, he worked in radio, construction, retail, fishing, and literature.
Kyle Redman is a researcher and practitioner in deliberative democracy. He is the Democracy Lead at the AI & Democracy Foundation and Program Manager at the Federation for Innovation in Democracy – Europe. Previously, he was the Director of Research and Design at The newDemocracy Foundation in Australia. He co-authored the UNDEF Handbook Democracy Beyond Elections and the book The A, B & C of Democracy. His work focuses on improving the quality and quantity of new, fairer and more effective democratic processes such as citizen's assemblies. He has extensive practical experience, designing and managing over 30 forms of assemblies in Australia and abroad. He collaborates with researchers on improving these practices with work published in NeurIPS workshops and partnering on the UK ARIA’s Safeguarded AI project.
Manon Revel is a postdoctoral AI research scientist at Meta FAIR. Her research bridges applied mathematics, AI, and political philosophy to model and enhance collective intelligence, with applications to information quality, democratic decision-making, and human-AI collaboration. Manon holds a Ph.D. in Social and Engineering Systems and Statistics from MIT, where she developed mathematical frameworks for understanding collective decision processes in networked environments. Her work combines theoretical modeling with empirical validation, focusing on how information structures can strengthen outcomes’ quality and how system design can scaffold plurality and collective self-governance. Previously, she taught at MIT and Notre Dame University, was a fellow at the Harvard Law School's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, served as a Democracy Doctoral Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, and worked at Palantir, the Responsible AI Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Bell Labs.
Andrew Sorota is the Head of Strategic Initiatives at the Office of Eric Schmidt, where he oversees special projects and thought leadership on AI, geopolitics, and the future of democracy. Previously, he led research for Fareed Zakaria’s book projects and studied democratic innovation in Europe and the United States. Andrew holds a B.A. in Political Science and Philosophy from Yale University.