Robert Bjarnason about the Citizens Foundation and how technology supports participatory democracy

Welcome to another episode of Democracy Innovator

Podcast. Our guest today is

Robert Bjarnason,

the co-founder of the Citizen Foundation and

many other things,

but I think you will tell

us something about this in this episode.

Thank you for being here. Thanks for inviting

me.

As a first question,

what is the Citizen Foundation and

how did you start it?

The Citizen Foundation is a nonprofit.

We're actually two nonprofits.

One is registered in Iceland and

also one is American in the US.

It started in 2008. I was

actually living in London

at the time when

the financial crisis hit Iceland.

Iceland was a pretty vulnerable victim, and

over a period of time, all

the news was about Iceland

being bankrupt and so on.

You know, going by taxi

in London,

talking to the taxi drivers,

"Are you from Iceland? So unlucky,

your country is bankrupt."

Well, actually it didn't turn

out really that bad in the

end, but at the

time it was an overwhelming feeling

in Iceland where

trust in government and parliament

plummeted down to six percent.

This is one of the oldest parliaments

in the world, founded in the year

930, so like over

a thousand years old. Over a

thousand years of pretty good trust

in the parliament, but it plummeted

from sixty-seventy percent to

six percent in two weeks.

Then it was just overwhelming -

this idea that we weren't really

in control over what's going on anymore.

It was certainly in Iceland,

but also in wider society

in the rest of the world,

at least the Western world

like in the UK where I was.

So we had this idea -

this group of people,

mainly my partner and I

who started the first internet service company

in Iceland in 1993,

plus some other people from our network.

We had this idea to start

a civic tech nonprofit to

help create technology to enable better decision

making in society between governments and

citizens. We've always been using a lot

of open source software

and promoting and creating open source software.

The basic idea was:

how can we enable, by using

technology, the internet, and AI and other things -

how can we help governments

and citizens make better decisions in an

increasingly complicated world?

I was wondering, when you had

the idea that technology could help

people make better decisions -

you mentioned 2008, but you also said

that you opened an internet provider.

Was that also connected to

the idea that the internet could bring

more discussions?

Yeah, absolutely. I was twenty-one when

I started the internet company in '93.

The internet existed since 1987 really -

the text-based internet - but then the

web came and we started this

internet company.

There was a lot of idealism about how

this increased communication could give people

a stronger voice in society

and even in a utopian way,

how the internet and cyberspace could really

transform social power structures

and make society fairer and more equal.

So yes, I was definitely a

part of that. That's also why we

started that internet company.

I'd been helping schools connect to the

internet. I was at the Teachers

University, and I

downloaded the first web browser called Mosaic.

I'd been on the text-based internet

for years,

and I tested it and was like,

"Wow, this is the future."

We actually downloaded the first

public Linux operating system called Slackware

on floppy disks. That was all

for free - Linux, you know.

We set up telephone lines

in my friend's living room.

So I'd always been interested in

using all this open source software as well.

So the idea in 2008 -

opposed to this idea of

the internet - I mean, the internet was not really

delivering. Yes, it's given a lot of people

voice, but when it comes to actually giving people

a voice that can influence decision making,

there was almost none.

But also, just in

general, how open source

community-based things can really work.

Linux showed that, the internet

showed that you can actually have grassroots open source

solutions that really make big changes

in society. That's also the reason why we

decided that since we're going to be

working with citizen engagement to build

up trust, we couldn't be a

for-profit company. We had to be

a nonprofit organization because

otherwise we wouldn't have the right

alignments.

In your opinion, is the internet

still a space of freedom, or

can it also be a space of surveillance

in some way?

I think the internet is still a

place of freedom in a way,

but it's also basically a place of surveillance.

There are different types of

surveillance in different places of the world.

In some places it's highly

monitored and not really free at

all for free thought.

But I think the internet, like everything else,

just reflects the society

that it's embedded in.

So what are the

main solutions that you propose to

this distrust that is missing regarding

classic democratic systems -

Western democratic systems?

When we started, we felt like,

"Okay, so how can we use the internet?"

We started thinking very quickly about

e-democracy, collective intelligence.

There were quite a few people -

academics and others - trying different things.

The basic idea is

that if you have a

complicated decision, and in the modern world

we have increasingly complicated decisions

with competing demands -

what is considered a good decision today

maybe is not exactly the same as

twenty years ago. The world is

evolving, it's not static.

The idea is if you're doing

a complicated decision or decision-making process

that's going to affect a lot of people,

then actually by reaching out

at the right time when you're creating the

policy to citizens to actually get

information - this basic principle is

that we're going to make better decisions

with better information.

I think few people

can argue against that - it's

even mathematically proven that

more information is going to give you

better decisions.

That's the core of the

idea - the utilitarian part.

But obviously there's also the democratic

angle of it. What makes a good

democratic decision is something that is going to

be balancing the competing interests

of the voters and the people who

are living in a society that

the rule or regulation or law

or decision affects.

This can be small things

like participatory budgeting - are we going to put

a playground there or an

outdoor hiking park? There are lots of

good examples of participatory budgeting

all around Europe and the

world. But also policy

like educational policy, traffic policies -

all sorts of policies where you have many

different stakeholders.

For example, the Scottish Parliament, where

the platform and this idea is embedded into

the committee system of the Scottish Parliament.

They've been doing really groundbreaking

work, leading the world in many ways

when it comes to engagement.

They have an engagement

unit and they take it very seriously,

very professionally. They offer

a service to the different committees

to say, "Oh yeah, we have this issue,

do you need information from the people,

from the public, before you take this decision?"

And then the committees say, "Oh yes, we need

information on X, Y, and Z,"

and then that gets

implemented. It's like a way of

actually delivering real

value to the elected

representatives in the committees by getting

good information to them.

This is used quite many

times. It's just examples of how

this kind of engagement can

both lead to better decisions

but also

help empower people democratically

because they can influence the decisions

themselves by taking part.

I was thinking - so now

we have representative democracy.

Do you think that in the future

with this kind of deliberative

tools like participatory budgeting

and all these new tools that maybe use AI,

we could have some different kind

of political system? Maybe without

representatives, maybe still with some

representatives or professional politicians?

Obviously anything is possible

in the future, but I think

democracy, law, and everything -

how it all connects together,

the norms that people are used

to - there are all sorts of different

things that need to change

together for some really major changes

to the system.

One of the things that we've been very much

against in our work for

seventeen years since we started this is

direct democracy. We have

taken clear stances that there are

lots of decisions where direct democracy

can't work today.

I think that's one of the things -

this idea of proxy voting, for example,

where you delegate your vote to certain

parliamentarians. There are issues with direct democracy.

We have referendums obviously,

and Switzerland is obviously famous for that,

but we have taken this stance

against direct democracy for several reasons.

One is security -

how secure are you doing it online?

We're lucky here in Iceland,

and also Estonia and some other Baltic countries,

where a lot of people have

electronic IDs that enable any

type of direct democracy.

But if you don't have reliable

electronic IDs, you shouldn't be doing

direct democracy where people vote on insecure platforms

about something important, because

that's going to totally undermine

democracy. It's going to create distrust

in democracy if people are voting

on platforms that are not secure.

That already limits lots of

places from really doing any

reliable direct democracy.

But we also draw the line

at participatory budgeting things

where people are voting for priorities.

In Better Reykjavik - our main project

that's been running in the city of Reykjavik

for fifteen years now -

people have a chance to put forward

ideas about what to do

in their neighborhoods. Seventeen hundred ideas

came in a couple of years ago.

Six months later, the city

looked at them, professionals costed them,

and then people can vote with

their electronic IDs on what ideas

are going to be implemented in the

neighborhoods. But if it was about

policy, then we have a

totally different dimension where

the power actually lies.

The thing is that the

power in online things is

controlled by who knows about it

and how you control who knows about it.

You do that through social media,

and how do you control who sees what

on social media? You pay for it.

So basically

anything you do online

for direct democracy - we're voting on this

issue or that way - for us

is not in line with our values.

We always recommend against it because

even if you have electronic IDs,

if it was a controversial issue

and it's all online,

it's just too easy to

manipulate. That's just the problem

of referendums in general - referendums

can go all sorts of different ways

recently, as we've seen.

But having said that,

I think what we can see

in the future is that

AI is going to help empower

the organizational side of

governments because often the reason

why there isn't participation is because

of lack of resources and

lack of planning capabilities to actually incorporate

the feedback. I think AI

is really going to empower that

part - it's going to increase the capacity

of government to actually

work through good decision making

exponentially, not just in the

next two years.

But then also with AI,

it's going to help empower

citizens. For example, with

doing a new iteration of Better Reykjavik

later this year - we have over forty thousand

registered users - we're going to have

an AI system that is going

to allow people to have

an AI agent that's basically going to be

watching out for their interests in the

city. Depending on the

subjects they're interested in,

it's going to be like your agent

watching out for your interests.

I think both of

those aspects - both in terms

of more capacity for governments

and also more help for citizens -

that's going to really help with the quality

and quantity of citizens

working with government and AI for better

decisions.

I was thinking about power

and information. If I don't have

information, I also don't have the

power to choose to do A or

B. Then there is this question

about the lack of participation -

if people don't have the information,

they can't actually participate.

If they had

information about a certain person,

maybe that person could see about

changing something in the neighborhood where

they live. I think this is a

cultural problem related to

education, because maybe in school

we are not taught

about how we should participate

and how it is important.

Absolutely. One of the things

that we've done over the years is

that especially after mobile phones

became popular like in 2013,

2014, 2015, when everybody

had smartphones, was to lower

the barrier to participation

both through technology and

design. For example,

when you are

visiting a civic project on the Scottish Parliament

or something, the first thing you see

is a nice image, then

there's a very short description of what

to expect, and then

you can see more through a

"read more" button. It has a very

simple user interface which we also have

designed for deliberation.

Instead of when people see

an idea asking them to

comment on it, we ask them to

help us out - help us

find the pros and cons.

We ask them to help us find the best

arguments. I think that's an

issue - people need enough

information, but also how

the information is presented to them

and at what level you break down

information. For example, we did this

with the government thinking about constitutional

changes in Iceland. We worked

with them on a Better Reykjavik platform

where they basically had to

break down the constitution into

parts - like four different things they wanted to

change. You could have put a

big PDF with all the legal text

and asked people to give comments,

but we knew that would never work.

So what we did on our platform was

create pages where you have

the three top-level topics in

very short text. You click on

each one and then there are four things

that the government wanted to do in the constitution

connected to each topic - very clear,

almost lowering the barriers

so almost everybody could understand it.

That simple change, compared to

the PDF with the actual law proposal -

that's like a barrier that

ninety percent of people can't deal with.

We lowered it so that ninety percent

of people can process it because

it's been broken down like that.

That's really important. But I think

when it comes to the

information part itself, I think

AI is already helping people

who are using ChatGPT or

Claude or whatever. It's both

doing searching for you, it knows your preferences,

it's like on your side in a way.

If you get a

subscription to ChatGPT, at least now

it has no advertisers, it's just you

and the model, so in theory

it's going to be on your side,

knowing your preferences.

What we're doing with our

AI agent for Better Reykjavik

for your priorities is that

it's not just looking out for your interests

in the city, but we are actually going to

build it in an open source way

where you can use open source models,

building it in a way where

you can basically tell

the model, "Those are my

interests and the things in the city,

my needs - I'm a parent,

I have those children with those abilities,

I have a car," whatever.

Then the AI will help you

find the information.

I think about not having the information -

if you go back thirty years ago,

you had some people who

would read all the newspapers every day

and have all the information,

and some people who didn't read

papers at all and

wouldn't be up to date on anything.

But today it's totally different -

information is coming from everywhere,

some of it is true, some not.

So having the information has changed

a lot because there's just so much information.

I think AI is the solution to help

us deal with that by

understanding your priorities.

Is Your Priorities the

main platform that you're working on?

But before asking you about it,

would you like to share something

about your professional background -

academic, but whatever?

Very short on my

academic record, but I

started - my father's an electrical engineer

and my mother's a doctor.

My father was early into computers,

and I guess I was

hyperactive, so he got me programming

at nine. I had a computer

called the Oric-1 microprocessor -

it was like a training computer for kids.

I got interested and really

spent all my energy on it.

I sold my first piece of software

in 1984 - a teletext

information booking system that would

scroll information. It was

used by the national government

for meteor strike information in

1984. I sold my

first game program in 1987

in a programming language called Prolog -

an expert system. Then I

took a break from computers.

I was involved in seven

feature films,

spent a year as a substitute lighting

director for the opera,

club promotion, putting on raves,

things like that. But then

I got back into it.

I was at the education

network, which was a pioneering

internet network for teachers,

helping connect schools to the

internet. That was when I saw

at the Teachers University the

Mosaic browser, and we

started this ISP.

In '95, I started the

first of two ISPs

in Denmark. Then I was

mostly traveling between there

and San Francisco where I

was working at a video game company.

I met some great people,

including my brother.

Then I got into really exciting

technology back then - chat bots.

In 2001, I met Lynne Hershman,

who had just done a movie

called Teknolust. She came

to me and said, "Hey, can you put

her on a Palm Pilot?" So we

did that. It was actually an exhibition

in San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

for a year. People

could beam the chat bot

into their Palm Pilot using infrared light.

Then I moved to London

after the dot-com crash,

worked on video games,

mobile phone games, and many other things.

At thirty-six, I decided to

take a break from the video

game industry and start a fintech

company working with hedge funds

and trading platforms.

At that point in 2008,

when this financial crisis happened,

frankly if I had still been

in the video game industry,

I probably wouldn't have started the Citizen Foundation.

But being in the financial world

gave me the opportunity to

make money so I could start the foundation

myself. Also, this idea -

if I can use technology

and AI to help rich people

make more money, why can't I

also use technology to make

society better and use technology

for good? Since then it's been

the Citizen Foundation for seventeen years.

We developed Your Priorities

very early on. We also

started a collective intelligence

AI platform three years ago

and started to work with

Northeastern University's Center for Social Impact.

We've been using AI and

large language models since 2019,

so I've been living in the

AI world for a long time.

The capabilities of what AI

now has have been growing really fast

the past five years,

so we've been slowly

transforming all our platforms

to be AI-first.

I read that you also

started a pirate radio?

Yeah, that's because my

father's a ham radio operator.

When I was seven or eight,

I convinced my father to

let me use his FM

transmitter with my cassette player

and a little microphone.

I had my cassettes - I

thought I was doing like a favor

with a five hundred meter or

one kilometer radius where all

my friends were listening in their cars.

I was playing awesome music

of the time. This was back

in 1979 or something,

a long time ago.

I was thinking - 2008 was

a significant year because of

the crisis, but Bitcoin was

born in 2008. There is

a lot of speculation behind Bitcoin,

but also some ideology.

What are your thoughts about

Bitcoin or blockchain?

To be honest, I've

never really got into it.

I've stayed away from that.

Every time people have asked me

to support liquid democracy

or whatever using blockchain,

I've stayed away from that.

I like the ideology - this

early internet, cyberspace stuff

where we can actually create

other power structures that are

more fair. I like that,

but it hasn't really happened

like that. It hasn't really

been of any use for

at least what I'm doing.

I think it's a good idea,

but I just haven't seen

any applications that have convinced me.

Because even though there's this

decentralization thing - once again,

it's proven that yes,

in theory you can have it

be untraceable and decentralized,

but then humans are humans

and they're going to use exchanges

all over the place. There are

ways of looking at and

knowing what's going on.

Even criminals, I guess,

but it's not really fulfilling

the original promise - or not

the promise, but the original things

people projected on it.

Humans are humans - I think

that's a key phrase.

The humans that are

using Your Priorities - are they using it

for which kind of

uses? Can you share maybe some

use cases?

So basically, most of the

use is when there

is a project going on.

For example, right now there's

a consultation with the Scottish

Parliament about ADHD - Attention

Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

They started like a couple

of weeks ago, already got

like seven hundred responses.

It's anonymous. Thousands of people

have come to learn about it -

they advertise it somewhere else

and people come and participate.

In a city context,

there's collecting feedback

on a new traffic policy,

collecting ideas. We have

this feature called deliberation -

a debate solution where we

really manage to encourage people

to find the best arguments.

Back in 2009 when we

did our first pilot with

the Shadow Parliament in Iceland,

we used a regular

commenting system like on

YouTube or Facebook - just

like a thread of comments.

In the first evening of

the platform about some policy,

we had these people in

a horrible personal argument

on the first evening.

We lost the platform users -

they were going at each

other personally.

I was looking at it like,

"Oh, this is not going

to work." But what we

came up with - we got

inspiration from parliamentary debates

and other university debate

structures. Also my experience

in the video game industry

is that

when you are building

a user experience like a

website or an app,

one secret is that you

are really in control of

the experience. When you have

a computer game, the player

thinks they're in control,

and they are to an extent,

but it's mainly the game

developer who controls exactly

what the experience is going to be.

The same applies to any

digital platform.

So I had this idea -

lots of people play video games

and think about how to

run the game. Could it

be an idea to mix

video games with participation

and debates, where people are

actually debating about the problems

of our society?

Absolutely. I think

gamification - when you take

small game elements -

but we also have this idea

for an actual game.

Instead of just asking for comments,

by having people help us

find the best arguments

in a project,

we get people putting both

pros and cons,

where the same person writes

both. There's almost never

any arguments just by

changing into this new

structure of design.

Also, you can't comment directly

on somebody's point - you have to

do a counterpoint. That's worked

really well for our

partners like the Scottish Parliament -

they couldn't deal with it

if it was just arguments

all the time.

But gamification can go a long

way. We actually have

an idea we call

the Community Challenge.

We actually applied to Google.org,

though we couldn't get that through.

But basically it's an idea

where governments or civil society

can put forward challenges

in the city or in a country,

and then a team of human

players with AI agents work together

to solve the problem.

They take different roles -

it's like a role-playing game.

There's a journalist role,

an investigator role - different roles.

It's set up like a game,

but it actually has real

issues behind it.

What's going to enable it to work

is the AI agents.

The agents are going to be

able to keep things from going wrong,

they're going to be able to

do the complicated things,

do lots of research,

process information, and

do all the fact-checking.

That's actually an idea we

have on the table,

but it would cost like a

million dollars or something to develop,

so one day maybe.

I was thinking related to

institutions - a platform like

the one you are

describing, how easy or

hard is it to explain

to an institution, to a politician,

this innovative platform?

I don't think it

is hard to explain in terms

of how it works.

It's very simple to use.

For example, in Iceland

we have forty thousand

registered users in Reykjavik,

but totally ninety thousand

registered users in the

whole country because they have

fifty-plus pilots using it.

So like one-third of the

country knows the platform,

including the politicians.

Many people have used it.

That's a bit of a special

situation here in Iceland

in terms of how many people

have used this open source platform

specifically. But it's really about

does it serve a need?

That's what we need to

convince the politicians about.

But it's not enough to

convince the politicians because

you also have to set it up

so the layers of

bureaucracy that need to

respond to it are going to work

there. Any policy decision

involves a very complicated

interplay between different levels -

on the city level but also

on the parliamentary level in

terms of lawyers, regulations,

and different levels of

bureaucracy. So you need to

have a practical plan

that's going to make the

participation work on the bureaucratic

level. One of the things

that often kills most

participation processes is budget -

budget money. That's the

reason why we

started very early on

with Your Priorities and our policy is

that if you don't have money,

you don't need to pay for it.

It's a volunteer thing

since we're a nonprofit.

We've done many of

the most successful Your Priorities projects

where they didn't pay anything.

We got around that "Oh no,

we have to find money for this" -

well, it's free.

That's one thing. For

most modern politicians -

smart people working in

municipalities and governments -

most of them already

think it's a good idea

to get more information

to make better decisions.

So it's usually not a lot

of convincing to do

or explanation of how it works,

but it's just everything else -

all the complications that

result in

participation not happening.

I'd like to share something

about your organization in

relation to your team -

what kind of skills,

and maybe how was it created?

Where are you searching for people?

It started basically -

it's always been like a

small group of people.

It's mostly been like five

or something in different roles.

For seven years,

I took no salaries

from the foundation.

We've gotten grants

from the EU and

from all over the place,

but it's always been

like a passion project.

So several people have

come and gone. Recently

with me, we've had

Joshua and my partner Robert,

plus my son Alex

and some others.

It's been like a few people around -

mostly friends and family

type of thing. When

you don't have dependable salaries

to offer, that's usually how you

get people to help,

but that is also great

in many cases.

Obviously it's been a lot

on the technology side -

most of the technological development.

We partner with, for example,

Northeastern University Center for Social Impact.

Beth Noveck has been

leading those research processes.

We partnered with her from

2013 to 2019.

Also the Scottish Parliament

and many others.

We are just bringing the

technology component.

That's our domain or

scope, if you like.

We don't offer the

service of going somewhere

and setting up a democracy project

for somebody. We have

partners for that from

Democratic Society from Brussels

and in-touch.org,

European Citizen Action Service.

That's how we've been -

lean, family, friends oriented,

but with a lot of partners

that help us scale up the work.

I was curious about

the projects that you are

working on or that you worked on.

If you would like to share something?

So really exciting project -

I'm actually going to be presenting

in San Francisco in

August at the opening

with this as part of

the Future of Work program

of the GitLab Foundation.

GitLab is a software

development security company,

and they have this foundation.

We were one of the projects

that got funded last year.

This is with Northeastern University

where we're using AI

and agents to help states

identify jobs that are

requiring university degrees but

really should be skill-based.

So this is the idea

of the problem being that

there are jobs that

go unfilled often, and

maybe some of them have

too high education requirements.

So we use AI to help

states optimize that process.

This has been a

really interesting project.

I think that's where you can see

in many places this idea

of using AI for good.

If nobody is funding it

and it's not profitable enough

to have that focus,

it's really important for society

to keep funding nonprofit ideas.

Another interesting project

from earlier in the year -

we worked with Northeastern University

and the state of New Jersey

where they are

doing research on the job

market - what effect will AI

generally have on the

job market in New Jersey?

They have this AI task force

in New Jersey.

What we helped them with

is that we first identified

the root causes of the problems -

what are the root causes

of disruption of AI in New Jersey?

We did this using our

open source tools to do

large-scale web research

looking at thousands of

documents, plus interviews,

to look for everything recent people have been

talking about regarding the

effect that AI will have on jobs.

Then we had a curated

list of two hundred

AI impacts or potential

root causes of problems

that people might face.

We put this into voting

by the public using a tool

called All Our Ideas,

which we also developed,

where we asked people what's

going to be the greatest impact

of the next five years

of generative AI.

Then people vote in a

pairwise manner, and we got

seventy thousand votes.

Some of the top items

were things like privacy issues -

people are concerned about privacy rights.

Then we did a second stage

where we actually used

AI also to help us

come up with solutions to

some of the problems.

It's a very classic example

of many of the projects

we've done in the past

where we are mixing together

AI research, then

engagement of people at

different stages, and then

we also use AI also

to help us find solutions.

Other projects you're excited

about - could be a project

you worked on or maybe

a project of someone else

that is interesting?

I think in general there

are many people

looking at how to

use AI for good.

I think that sort of

in general, the category

of projects is that

the promise of AI

to do good for society

is at least as powerful

as the potential bad things

AI can do for society.

The thing is that

if we don't have the

imagination to actually think

about projects to do good,

then the bad things will happen.

I think we've missed this

with social media.

I was talking about this

for years - how social media,

which we saw quite early on,

had the potential for some

bad influences on society,

on mental health and stuff.

It just went on and on,

and this idea came

that we can regulate

social media with rules.

Because we can't just

stop the bad things happening

with this technology,

we've been promoting

and are generally promoting

that yes, obviously you want

to stop the bad things,

but you also have to

do good things.

You have to have

positive ideas and things.

You can't just try to

stop the bad because

you're going to fail quite badly.

You also have to do positive things.

I think that's so important

when it comes to democracy projects -

we have this amazing opportunity

now with AI.

Just like with programming,

I can do things now

literally ten times faster

programming-wise with agents

than I could two years ago.

Ten times faster - that

is like ten of me

two years ago.

Think about that.

If people are having

interesting ideas for projects

to do something for democracy,

the barrier to entry

is so much lower.

So maybe a bit of

a long answer to your question,

but the projects that

I'm excited about are

the new projects that

listeners are going to be

working on for this purpose.

To reply in some way

to your question,

I have this feeling that

software now is not

so important - I mean,

it is important, but

before you had to

have a team of maybe

ten developers, and now

just one person could

be enough.

I can feel that

in some years, maybe

also my mother who

is not a developer,

maybe she will be able

to talk to ChatGPT

or Google something

and create an application.

So what is important now

in the civic tech field?

After it's not so

important to build a

platform that is well designed -

I would say we humans

should still be the

designers, or could AI

also have this role?

What AI does is

that it empowers people

with agency that need

to want to do something.

So if you have this

need to want to do

something good,

now it's easier than ever in

terms of just using

AI to do things you want

and empower you and

a small team,

one person, two people.

You're absolutely right - for sure.

We are the same - we're

a bit behind the curve

on programming and stuff,

but it's getting there soon.

And that's also like

with software - software

is like a means

to do something.

The software is just

there to achieve some

sort of goal.

But I think we're

already seeing that

in the job market

where with programmers

in general, there aren't

as many openings,

but there was a lot

of growth during COVID

and a lot of people

put everything into digital solutions.

Now big companies have

been laying people off

like Microsoft let nine

thousand people go.

There's this sort of

interesting situation where

people are getting let go,

and you know, "Start

your own startup" and

stuff like that.

That's great if

they have that drive.

But I think there's

also a huge scope

for people to do

things in the civic

tech world and civil

society that aren't going

to make big dollars

but are going to

make things better for people,

make democracy better,

or whatever.

These can have huge

rewards if you're going

to do something like

that and you're successful

at it.

Even if you're not

successful, it is still

highly rewarding.

Obviously pursuing startup

money and everything -

that's absolutely fine,

I've been there myself.

But I'm just saying

with this age of

AI and lower barriers

to entry, I'm hoping

also that

how resources and money

and everything is distributed

is going to change.

But what matters is

agency and creating real

value, and there are

so many things you

can do with creating

real value in civic

tech and with democracy

that could really make

people's life better.

Looking for meaning,

looking for purpose -

that's definitely for some people

going to be a great

path forward.

Do you have anything

you're working on that

you have some problem

to fix, so

you will need some help?

All the time.

There are both software

problems and other problems -

all sorts of issues.

One of the great

things about this part

of working in the nonprofit

civic tech world

is that there are

often conferences, meetings,

common projects, and so on

where you get a sense

of understanding the human

aspects of all of it.

If you're just with

your head in the code,

you also need to understand

the human aspects of it.

But now

with AI today,

if I have a complicated

programming problem,

I have several options.

I sometimes put the

same question into ChatGPT,

Gemini, and Claude -

I call it like

my AI council.

Also, ChatGPT's

OpenAI programming assistant -

when I get bug

reports or want a

new feature, I

used to put it

in a task management system,

but now most of

them go straight into

ChatGPT's agent.

Instead of putting

it on a list for later,

I just put it straight

in and say "fix this,"

and then it just

does the feature or

fixes the bug for me.

Yeah, we hope

that continues.

You were talking before

about the community of

civic tech, people

volunteering or working

in the civic tech field.

Do you have any

message for them?

Because sometimes there are

people that have another

side problem - finding

funding for their project.

They really believe in

an idea that can

make the world a better place,

let's say.

My message is

that there's been this

transformation, especially when

it comes to civic

tech specifically -

we have already been

transformed in terms

of how much capacity

increase we can have

on a small team

using AI.

I also think on

the funding side,

in the next few years

when people realize -

when we see so

much of our work...

I consider myself a programmer.

I've been a programmer

since 1981.

I have really worked

hard at it, practiced

a lot, become really

good in my field.

I've put in

hundreds of thousands

of hours of practicing.

This is what humans

do - we practice.

But now I

have access to

AI that is almost

as smart as me.

The next generation will

be much smarter.

That's sort of -

I think my

worth and value

is a bit difficult

to think about just

because these neural

networks are in a

way taking my job.

But I think

the value and what

you can do in society

is going to change

totally when we see

knowledge-type of work

being so highly automated.

There are going to be

new things we can't

imagine yet.

I think funding for

making society better -

I think that's definitely

one of the positive

potential outcomes we

can get out of this.

We basically have

two scenarios: we have

a scenario where we

have like thirty percent

unemployment and corporations

control everything, but we

also potentially have

a positive scenario where

we have like a

three-day work week

and plenty of resources

for doing projects

connected to society

because there's so much

value created.

If you do anything

that actually helps

facilitate better things,

that has value.

There are so many

things in society

that are under-invested

in because of how

capitalism works in

the world,

mostly in the US.

This is much better

in traditional civil

society being well-funded

in Europe, not so

much in Iceland.

But at least that's

my belief - that

we're going to start

to really look at

what's going on around this,

what is important,

and when we see

things that used

to be very expensive -

like programming -

plummet to almost zero,

I think we're going

to see more clearly

what is important.

I think there are

a lot of opportunities

for people to

tackle civic tech,

democracy, and so on.

Thank you, Robert.

Would you like to

say something more?

For me it was

great to thank you

for having me on here,

and I'm sure we'll

speak again.

Absolutely.