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Polis: Open Source AI for Large-Scale Open-Ended Feedback
webcompdemocracy.org·compdemocracy.org/polis/
Polis is relevant to AI safety discussions around AI-assisted governance and coordination mechanisms; it offers a concrete example of deploying ML to facilitate large-scale human deliberation, which informs debates about democratic oversight of AI systems.
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Importance: 45/100tool pagetool
Summary
Polis is an open-source platform using machine learning to enable large-scale, open-ended public deliberation by clustering participant opinions and surfacing areas of consensus. It has been deployed in major civic processes including Taiwan's vTaiwan initiative and Uber regulation discussions. The tool demonstrates how AI can facilitate collective intelligence and reduce polarization in democratic decision-making.
Key Points
- •Uses real-time ML clustering to map opinion landscapes across large groups, identifying consensus and disagreement patterns without predefined answer choices
- •Successfully deployed in high-stakes governance contexts, notably Taiwan's vTaiwan platform for digital policy deliberation
- •Open-source design allows civic technologists and governments to self-host and adapt the platform for local democratic processes
- •Designed to reduce polarization by surfacing statements that bridge across opinion clusters rather than amplifying divisive content
- •Represents a practical application of AI-assisted coordination tools for collective decision-making at scale
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| AI-Assisted Deliberation | Approach | 63.0 |
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# Polis
In plain language, Polis is a an [open source](https://compdemocracy.org/open-source "open source") technology for survey research that leverages data science. It is described on the website as:
> a real-time system for gathering, analyzing and understanding what large groups of people think in their own words, enabled by advanced statistics and machine learning.
More specifically, Polis is a platform for a [conversation](https://compdemocracy.org/conversation "conversation"), in which [participants](https://compdemocracy.org/participants "participants") submit short text statements, or [comments](https://compdemocracy.org/comments "comments"), (<140 characters) which are then sent out [semi-randomly](https://compdemocracy.org/semi-randomly "semi-randomly") to other participants to [vote](https://compdemocracy.org/vote "vote") on by clicking agree, disagree or [pass](https://compdemocracy.org/pass "pass"). Polis allows [conversation](https://compdemocracy.org/conversation "conversation") [owners](https://compdemocracy.org/owners "owners") to create [conversations](https://compdemocracy.org/conversations "conversations") which can seamlessly engage (currently) up to hundreds of thousands or (conceivably) [millions of participants](https://compdemocracy.org/millions-of-participants "millions of participants").
Polis provides automatic (real-time, web-based [report](https://compdemocracy.org/report "report")) and CompDem, or your own data scientists, can produce manual (python Jupyter [notebooks](https://compdemocracy.org/notebooks "notebooks") based) data science analysis of the resulting [polis opinion matrix](https://compdemocracy.org/polis-opinion-matrix "polis opinion matrix") available in the data [export](https://compdemocracy.org/export "export"). See: [services](https://compdemocracy.org/services "services").
Polis is a [💡 Wikisurvey](https://compdemocracy.org/Wikisurvey "💡 Wikisurvey"), as:
- the [dimensions](https://compdemocracy.org/dimensions "dimensions") of the survey are created by the [participants](https://compdemocracy.org/participants "participants") themselves
- the survey adapts to participation over time and makes good use of people's time by showing comments semi-randomly
- participants do not need to complete the entire survey to contribute meaning
[pol.is](https://compdemocracy.org/pol.is "pol.is") is the main instance of the technology [hosted](https://compdemocracy.org/hosted "hosted") online, but there are other instances in the wild.
In its highest ambition, [Polis](https://compdemocracy.org/Polis "Polis") is a platform for enabling [collective intelligence](https://compdemocracy.org/collective-intelligence "collective intelligence") in human societies and fostering mutual understanding at [scale](https://compdemocracy.org/scale "scale") in the tradition of [nonviolent communication](https://www.cnvc.org/learn-nvc/what-is-nvc). [Polis](https://compdemocracy.org/Polis "Polis") is [open source](https://c
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