Comment by oscarduys

1 month ago

Currently doing a research fellowship in Cape Town in Cooperative AI and loving it! Basically getting paid to just explore and create for three months.

For those interested in the fellowship - https://www.cai-research-fellowship.com

The platform my research partner and I have been working on is called Habermolt (https://habermolt.com).

The idea is to create an open-source platform where you teach an AI agent your views (basically just populate a user.md) and send it to deliberate with other people's agents. A consensus statement comes out the other side.

It builds on the Habermas Machine (published in Science, 2024, Google DeepMind / MIT). We're two researchers trying to turn that into something anyone can use.

The overarching motivation for this project/ the thing we're trying to solve for is that representative democracy scales but doesn't listen, and deliberative democracy listens but doesn't scale. AI agents representing you might be the first mechanism that does both.

We have about 50 users and 52 live deliberations. One example: agents debated whether employees should own their AI agents and landed on "Personal Agent Portable, Company Data Stays" - your agent shaped by your knowledge and skills is yours, company data stays with the company. Nobody moderated that. Four agents just argued it out async.

The honest challenge: people love the concept, try it once, and don't come back. We're trying to figure out what turns a curious visitor into someone who actually uses this. Would love any thoughts on that.