Published by the Toda Peace Institute October 30, 2025, this article outlines the experience of testing four of these tools—Crowdsmart, Pol.is, Talk to the City, and Deliberation.io—with a group of student volunteers to understand their function and effectiveness, and to identify digital facilitation strategies. The paper concludes with recommendations to make deliberative tools more accessible in the future to enable collective decision-making.

Common Good AI uses CrowdSmart.ai as a tool to promote civic engagement. The CrowdSmart.ai system was originally developed to evaluate the efficacy of business startups, so let's use that as an example to explain the architecture. 

The author explores the vulnerabilities in our democratic system that AI will affect. He advocates for “protected democratic deliberation,” akin to citizen assemblies, as a strategy to safeguard democracy in an AI-empowered world.

The Common Good AI story started at a meeting at MIT Media Lab, orchestrated by John Clippinger in March 2023. We had a shared vision of AI that looked beyond the current fascination with large language models. We gathered a group that included John Cordier, CEO of Epistemix, and Kim Polese (a co-founder of CrowdSmart).

The capacity of groups to solve problems rests on finding common ground. At the moment, our nation and our world struggle. It is a struggle between building and preserving identity (be it national, political party, corporate, or individual) and the capacity to form bridges of understanding and knowledge discovery.

On July 4th, I took a long, four-and-one-half-hour, thoughtful walk. I am fortunate to live in a coastal community that celebrates July 4th simply and authentically. Farmer John drives his tractor down the main street. His father-in-law, a veteran of World War II, was interviewed in front of city hall, next to the famous Half Moon Bay "Sit Down the marching band." Some are older, and this year, the band seemed smaller.

In my walk, I absorbed the diversity of our community.

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