One Project ads

Our CEO Aaron Tanaka has a letter in today's New York Times, and the idea is one we care about deeply. The AI debate keeps circling the same question: which company or government gets to decide how this technology shapes our lives? Aaron's answer is: all of us should. We built an international agency to govern nuclear power. AI needs something similar. But governments and companies cannot be the only voices in the room. This is not a fantasy. Ireland used citizens' assemblies, everyday people chosen by lottery, to break decades of deadlock on marriage equality and abortion. France convened randomly selected citizens who produced 149 climate proposals. The UK's Climate Assembly did the same at the request of Parliament. German-speaking Belgium went further and made its citizens' council a permanent part of government. It is even starting for AI. Companies have begun piloting citizens' assemblies for AI decisions, and a global coalition launched at the Paris AI summit aims to bring 10,000 people together to help shape the technology's future. The public helped build the knowledge AI runs on. The public deserves a say in how and where it goes. Read Aaron's letter in the NYT: https://lnkd.in/eR7yvMnH

In today's Tech Policy Press, One Project's founder Justin Rosenstein makes the case that AI is at the same fork social media once was. The Like button wasn't inevitable. Someone chose it. (Justin would know. He helped build it.) That one design decision, optimize for engagement, engagement drives revenue, quietly reorganized how billions of people think and feel. Not out of malice. That's just what the incentive rewarded. We're at the same fork with AI. The technology isn't destiny. The business model is. Build AI to maximize attention and extraction, and we get a more powerful version of the machine we already regret. Build it to answer to the people it affects, and we get something else. Incentives are a design choice. Right now a very small number of people are making that choice for everyone. We don't have to repeat it. Read Justin's full piece here: https://lnkd.in/efkwpAUN

69% of Americans want the public to own half of the biggest AI companies. Bernie Sanders has a bill to make it happen. Almost nobody is arguing about the part that decides everything: who ends up holding the power. The bill moves half the stock of the largest AI firms into a public fund worth roughly $7 trillion, and cuts every American a check for more than $1,000 a year. OpenAI countered with 5%, about $42.6 billion. So we are haggling over the size of the check. Meanwhile, the fund itself would be run by seven commissioners appointed by the President. Seven people, deciding for everyone else. Better than a dozen founders in Silicon Valley. But still a very small room. Democratic control of real money is not a thought experiment. At least 64 US cities and counties have run participatory budgeting, moving more than $360 million in community-directed funds. Community land trusts operate in 48 states. Mondragón has been worker-owned for close to seventy years and employs more than 80,000 people. 91% of Americans support employee ownership, including 84% of base Republicans. People have been doing this for two hundred years. They are good at it. What the work has never had is money at this scale. The money is coming either way. Do we want a check, or do we want a say? #EconomicDemocracy https://lnkd.in/gR57Z-cb

We are so excited! Columbus just gave residents a real say in $9 million of the city's money and Common made it possible! Columbus just launched Our Voice, Our Choice Budget, the city's first participatory budgeting process. For the first time, residents will decide where $9 million of the capital budget goes — $1 million per Council district, across all nine districts. An 18-member resident steering committee spent the past year designing the process from the ground up, with Councilmember Nick Bankston securing the funding behind it. At One Project, we partnered directly with the City to configure Common around what they built. Residents can now submit ideas for their neighborhoods, and this November, they'll vote on what gets funded. We built Common to prove participatory budgeting can run at the scale of a real city government that give residents real power over the decisions that shape their community. Columbus is that proof — and it's the first of many. Congratulations to Columbus, and to everyone who spent the last year building this. https://lnkd.in/gXpkR-AK #EconomicDemocracy #ParticipatoryBudgeting

Are you ready to rethink what democracy means? Tune in to hear Aaron Luce on the Henry Luce Foundation's "Luce Change" podcast as he explores innovative ideas for active participation and community empowerment. This transformative discussion provides fresh perspectives on building systems that prioritize inclusion and equality—perfect for those passionate about driving positive change.

Decades of policy have left people reasonably skeptical that democracy works for them at all. They're not wrong. So what do we do about it? Aaron Tanaka on the Luce Change podcast — participatory budgeting, democratic ownership, and what it takes to restructure power.