“ In your TED talk :‘ A bold idea to replace politicians ’, you talked about combining direct democracy and software agents . This reminded me of how the Five Star movement mobilised in Italy and how the Trump administration campaigned . How can we ensure direct
democracy is nor hijacked by charismatic populists or people with bad motives ? ” Continued
To bring that power back , I think you must take that power from that one person and give more power to a lot of people . Once you distribute that , you make it harder to hijack the system because there isn ’ t a single point of failure – e . g . grab the presidency or have control of parliament . There is a lot of technological difficulties we must overcome . We have to have reliable digital identities . To improve the way people inform themselves and have conversations . However , I do think there ’ s a lot of problems from having a broadcasting one to many democracy system in a world where communication is many to many .
Media by Jon Tyson
I understand the mismatch but are you concerned that even without an agenda , do you think that voter manipulation of ill-informed voters could sway the legislation in a country in a negative way ?
I am concerned so I think , how can we make that more difficult ? Like when you ’ re trying to defend your house , you can either build a fence around your house , add electrical wiring to the top of your fence , or you could even add machine guns to the top of your fence . You can always made it more difficult for someone to break in , but there will always be some people who can break in . We want to move to a world where it is more difficult to break in and easier to have a fair outcome . But , just like the system now , we cannot guarantee that the outcome is good . The question is , how can we get a greater probability that the outcome is f a i r ? I f w e c a n d o t h at , i t ’ s a n improvement .