Tackling Moloch: How YouCongress Offers a Novel Coordination Mechanism

AI Polls, liquid democracy + AI digital twins: Finding agreement, understanding disagreement.

Moloch, as articulated by Scott Alexander, represents the coordination problems that lead to outcomes that leave everyone worse off. While prediction markets explore what people think will happen, YouCongress aims to aggregate beliefs and desires regarding ideal outcomes. This open-source platform proposes a novel coordination mechanism, making use of public opinion polls with delegation and AI to enable large-scale participation and pave the way for more rational and impactful policy decisions.

Numerous proposals have been put forward to improve democracy through concepts like liquid democracy—a hybrid of direct and representative democracy—and augmented democracy. Yet, the goal of YouCongress is not to make binding referendums but to assist in decision-making, whether these decisions are made through democratic referendums, by parliaments, companies, or individuals. By aggregating beliefs and desires, YouCongress aims to provide a clearer picture of what people truly want, thereby facilitating more effective and aligned decision-making across various domains.

Delegation

YouCongress empowers users not only to cast votes directly on issues but also to delegate their votes to a chosen list of representatives. Similar to following users on social media, this delegation feature allows individuals to align their votes with the consensus of their selected delegates. For example, if a user is represented by five delegates who have voted on a specific issue, with three in favor and two against, the user's vote will automatically align with the majority and be counted in favor. Importantly, this delegated vote is overridden when a user chooses to vote personally; in such cases, the delegates' votes become irrelevant to that individual's vote.

An additional delegation mechanism to be implemented is topic-based delegation:

We will be able to integrate these mechanisms to have a list of delegates per topic:

While topic-based delegation is not yet implemented, the majority list remains effective, as many individuals choose not to vote or voice opinions on matters outside their expertise or areas of interest. For instance, a climate activist might frequently discuss environmental issues, but typically refrains from commenting on AI.

Other delegation mechanisms that we may explore are priority lists and consensus lists:

Another potential modification to scale votes is the introduction of cascading delegation. This would enable users to have their votes aligned with the delegates of their chosen delegates, further extending the influence chain. While this could significantly increase the number of effective votes, further research is needed to determine the impact on users as this approach risks reducing the directness and clarity of individual voting intentions.

Ultimately, considering the variety of delegation mechanisms and their potential combinations, we could develop a platform that enables anyone to create their own delegation & AI-assisted voting systems or leverage those developed by third parties. This would not only enhance flexibility and customisation but also foster innovation in democratic participation and decentralised governance. Please reach us if you have some ideas in this respect!

Quotes

YouCongress goes beyond simple polls by also allowing users to incorporate insights from influential voices. Participants can include quotes from public figures if they provide a source. Including quotes can inform a user's own voting decision and provide valuable context for those who delegate to them. This feature enables the inclusion of perspectives from influential figures, even if they aren't actively participating on YouCongress. Furthermore, YouCongress users can delegate to public figures whose vote is determined by their quotes.

AI digital twins

Additionally, when a vote is initiated on YouCongress, it begins with AI-generated perspectives attributed to notable figures, providing a starting point for discussion. This AI-generated content is most effective on topics where the views of public figures are well-documented and consistent. For instance, AI-generated statements reflecting the opinions of Greta Thunberg or Bill Gates on climate change would likely be accurate. As the accuracy of AI-generated content will continue to improve, future enhancements may include the automated provision of actual quotes of public figures and sources (instead of AI-generated content), allowing verification by users. Anyway, at the moment, AI-generated perspectives can be replaced by users with verified quotes, provided they include a source.

Authors

The authors of quotes and AI digital twins can log in with their Twitter or X accounts, allowing them to modify or delete any or all of their content and – if they wish – turn off their digital twin.

Opt-out Categories

Looking forward, we aim to improve user autonomy by introducing additional features, such as allowing users to opt out of participating via delegates or AI on certain categories, regardless of the actions of their delegates. This will provide users with greater control over their participation and the scope of their influence within the platform.

Privacy

All votes and delegates within YouCongress are currently public. This transparency facilitates faster experimentation and reduces the need for stringent security measures in this early stage. While we recognise that public polls might raise privacy concerns for some users, we believe that the benefits of transparency outweigh the risks at present. As the platform evolves, we may explore options for increased privacy, such as allowing users to make their votes private or introducing pseudonymous participation. In fact, private voting and delegation could be a layer on top of public voting. Even if only the results of private votes are ultimately considered, public votes and delegation could still be used as a basis for participation and delegation.

Coordination Problems

The diverse participation mechanisms available on YouCongress—including direct votes, delegation, quotes, and AI-digital twins—enable us to aggregate perspectives on a much larger scale than direct voting alone. Additionally, exposure to varied viewpoints can enrich our understanding and decision-making. This extensive aggregation helps us identify areas with overwhelming support for the introduction of new regulations and pinpoint when outdated ones should be removed.

Scott Alexander's "Meditations on Moloch" highlights numerous coordination problems that could potentially be resolved if there were a method to effectively aggregate our collective desires. For example:

> As a thought experiment, let’s consider aquaculture (fish farming) in a lake. Imagine a lake with a thousand identical fish farms owned by a thousand competing companies. Each fish farm earns a profit of $1000/month. For a while, all is well.

> But each fish farm produces waste, which fouls the water in the lake. Let’s say each fish farm produces enough pollution to lower productivity in the lake by $1/month.

> A thousand fish farms produce enough waste to lower productivity by $1000/month, meaning none of the fish farms are making any money. Capitalism to the rescue: someone invents a complex filtering system that removes waste products. It costs $300/month to operate. All fish farms voluntarily install it, the pollution ends, and the fish farms are now making a profit of $700/month – still a respectable sum.

> But one farmer (let’s call him Steve) gets tired of spending the money to operate his filter. Now one fish farm worth of waste is polluting the lake, lowering productivity by $1. Steve earns $999 profit, and everyone else earns $699 profit.

> Everyone else sees Steve is much more profitable than they are, because he’s not spending the maintenance costs on his filter. They disconnect their filters too.

> Once four hundred people disconnect their filters, Steve is earning $600/month – less than he would be if he and everyone else had kept their filters on! And the poor virtuous filter users are only making $300. Steve goes around to everyone, saying “Wait! We all need to make a voluntary pact to use filters! Otherwise, everyone’s productivity goes down.”

> Everyone agrees with him, and they all sign the Filter Pact, except one person who is sort of a jerk. Let’s call him Mike. Now everyone is back using filters again, except Mike. Mike earns $999/month, and everyone else earns $699/month. Slowly, people start thinking they too should be getting big bucks like Mike, and disconnect their filter for $300 extra profit…

> A self-interested person never has any incentive to use a filter. A self-interested person has some incentive to sign a pact to make everyone use a filter, but in many cases has a stronger incentive to wait for everyone else to sign such a pact but opt out himself. This can lead to an undesirable equilibrium in which no one will sign such a pact.

If we had a way to clearly understand people’s wishes, we could make better rules that help everyone. When a rule isn't needed anymore, we could easily decide together to end it. This could make changes in democracy faster and more direct. For example, if YouCongress finds a strong agreement on changing or getting rid of 50 laws, it could push politicians to act or even lead to new leaders stepping up.

Summary

In summary, YouCongress enables us to refine and evolve our beliefs by synthesizing diverse perspectives, helping us understand why others may think differently. By making our shared preferences explicit, we can effectively mitigate the challenges posed by Moloch. This extensive aggregation of beliefs and desires, achieved through public opinion polls with AI and delegation, allows us to identify areas of strong consensus, leading to more informed and impactful policy decisions. Ultimately, this facilitates the achievement of outcomes that are truly desired by all.

How You Can Help

YouCongress is in its early stages and greatly values community involvement in shaping its development. If you're interested in making a tangible impact, there are several ways you can contribute. You can help us by crafting new public opinion polls, sharing insightful quotes from influential figures, enhancing our open-source code, developing formal models of delegation mechanisms and AI-digital twins, running simulations to test the platform's effectiveness, analysing the philosophical and ethical implications of YouCongress and promoting the platform. Your support is essential to our growth and the impact we aim to achieve. To get involved or learn more, please follow us on X at @YouCongressCom or contact me at hec@hecperez.com. Thank you for considering joining our community!

Article first published on LessWrong.