super. Oh, so a few of you. Why not use as many as possible
your code of Yes, yes, it's my posse. Or
I got lots of friends like that as well. Yeah, see, we both munchie spent together we were we 12 years apart. Maybe it's a Tokyo years of Manchester University.
Yes, I also saw that you graduated from the same university. But I started just it was like a one year program. Business call a MBAs. So I can't say that I'm really like part of the community, I guess.
Don't worry. It's kind of weird of all the things. I'm just working on a blog that I started writing today about my first day at Manchester Manchester University. Actually, I was there with a coincidence. That's how the blog commit starts on my first day. At university. It was Manchester I met somebody. Tell story about the debt. But that's the kind of the point sorry, but anyway, as you move farther afield Rusholme citizens
Sorry, what do you mean?
So where did you live when you lived in Manchester?
Oh, when I stayed there. I lived in New New Islington not far from the northern quarters. Thank you. Okay. Cool.
Yeah. And you're one.
Sorry. Sorry.
I think the internet is not very good. Either. My internet's poor or yours is a bit of a delay on the line. I think. Yes,
I'm afraid it's my internet. I'm currently in a hotel and the wife here is not very good. I'm very sorry about that.
You worry if you want to ring on WhatsApp. That's fine as well. I don't mind.
I I might turn off my video so that it would be you know, less heavy, or the Wi Fi but you asked me something about Newspeak house. Right.
So did you meet Pat Cohn when you're a new speaker? Yeah, I know him a little bit. He stayed in my house actually. Really? Well. Yeah, he was I mean, North Yorkshire. And I owe about 18 months ago or two years ago, when I've been working on policy for about six months. I was on these calls that Pat Kahn hosted on a Saturday. And lots of very interesting people from around the world who are interested in policy. We wanted calls. And on one of them a pop concert. Oh, I'm going to London soon. I'm going to Newspeak house to a policy conference. But the person I was going to stay with in London isn't going can't stay with that person. Does anybody know anybody in London that I can stay with? And I said, Well, I don't think so icon and he said, Well, why don't I stay at your house then? I said, Well, you do but with four hours away from London. We'd like near Scotland. And he said, Okay, well do it. So that's my wife and my kids. So they said yes. So he loved it from Canada. Heathrow. We took the bus, the bus to Sahara. And we met and he stayed for two nights. And then we went down back to London to the Polish conference, in Newspeak.
He's quite an unusual guy, but I liked his go with the flow thing but ya know, we were both on in the same cohort. And yeah, I I had the pleasure of hanging out with him for almost a year. Like on a daily basis.
I bet. Was he sleeping there as well?
Of course he has his own room like everyone else
is packed on. Oh my Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Someone told me that he actually spent a long time with the previous cohort that was like from 21 to 22. And yes, he did slept a lot on the on the couch. And then he applied for the next cohort and he got into the next cohort so he could sleep in his own room. Whereas the know last time I heard about him, I think it was in September maybe October. He was he moved from Newspeak house to some other co living space in London, I think not far from some park in the West. And it sounded it sounded like a nice squat. I didn't know that there are squats in London. He told me I think he told me that it's something like a squat. Like there's a lot of people who just leave their
friends you live in them as well. Though I'm very traditional to 2.4 children, you know, to two kids, a Labrador wife. A house. Yeah, it was very nicely packed. Come here. He was very good with the dog and working with the kids. It was a cat character. I don't know anyone like Pat calm. He was not a tech person. So it was probably a lot of tech people like I can't, I don't know. 10 people I'm more of a college politics. Yeah, Politics isn't your thing and entrepreneurship and is willing to make a fool of myself. After him, how can I help you tell me about you tell me how do you know anything? Yes.
So I'm I started this project. Few months ago, while I was still looking, it's because I realized that, you know, one of the best applications of AI could be just helping people coordinate better, like enhance human coordination or maybe human collaboration. And so basically, I realized that yeah, if we try to use this, like, you know, something like GPT to facilitate a discussion between a few people. I mean, it can be five people or it can be 50 people, it's very scalable. Then, it basically becomes like a new, like a fundamentally new way to form collective intelligence or to you know, deliberate. So initially, I was thinking about deliberation. Like helping people discuss stuff, and I know that there are some very interesting projects that focus on deliberation specifically. And some of them are based on policy or some of them are trying to combine policies with AI. But I eventually and, you know, that's basically that's, you know, I've been doing this kind of product discovery process for the last few months. And I realized that actually the most underserved need in in the context of like self management or governance is actually sensemaking. So something that happens before you deliberate or even before you write the proposal or something like that. So basically just getting like collecting data collecting input from stakeholders, from, you know, members of the community, for instance, just getting like trying to understand what are the tensions and what the needs and what are the, you know, motivations it can be really helpful and really powerful. If you want to, for instance, find the shared purpose or formulate the shared purpose, like a purpose statement, you know, or maybe it's a strategy like, you know, some kind of goals for the next year. Or maybe it's a request for proposal, if you are giving out grants if you need to, you know, allocate funds, some in some organizations, they write so called Request for Proposals, which is like a brief for someone else to write the proposal. So this this, I'm just giving you like a few different examples of the I'm not sure like, yeah, like it's basically like outcomes of a good sensemaking. So you get some output from people and then you synthesize them and you get this artifacts. And those artifacts can be very useful for community management or for civic engagement. I think
it's just you have you got a team of people.
I currently we, we are a team of three. So I also have two co co founders. One of them is a full stack developer, the other one is designer. And we also we are incubating this project in something like a venture builder community, which basically builds a number of different tools. So harmonica is different from all of them, but we are all basically like human collaboration is like a common theme. So I get some support from that community as well. And also I've won a fellowship, like a month ago. It's not a big fellowship, but it's something from one of the large blockchain ecosystems systems who are interested in sensemaking Thank you. Very interested in sensemaking as well, but I'm personally I don't want to focus on that. I think that it can have very, you know, like impactful applications in the real world, in like, you know, civic engagement, participatory democracy. So that's why I was really excited. When I learned about your experience with Paulus and you personally, like I just, you know, found on your own you on LinkedIn and I saw what you've been doing with what's the name of the project collective wisdom?
Oh, crowd wisdom project is the Yes, crowd was the name of the brand around and the company is called consensus politics limited to nonprofit company. And I've made no spectacular loss doing I've made a massive loss. I regard it as a charity that's not including my time. I think I spent about I spent well 30,000 pounds plus $1,000 of my time on the project. Yeah,
I'm sorry to hear that I I've also spent
congratulate he's like an NBA. Cheap NBA like I've learned a lot. And I get to speak with Artem who's just want to finish it. Who wants to pick migraines, which is kind of funny. So it's worked out? Well. Depends how you look at it, look at it financially, in the short term, disasterous long term, probably very cheap, but it's the most useful thing I could do for planet Earth. Once you go, you know, once you have you had, you know, a dog and a few kids and a wife, what more do you need, really? And then you want to do useful things with your time and that's it's mine. So I regard as a charity, but I think it's been successful, but could have been so much more successful. And I think polos has been is amazing, but shouldn't be so much more than it is it should be far more better using is should be more and it drives me completely crazy that I am the most experienced user of a policy in the UK, if not Europe, and it shouldn't make and it shouldn't I shouldn't have had to put that much money into it. And all that time into it and should have had a greater impact on our democracy. How much sooner than then you probably hasn't really had an impact on our democracy. I'm terribly sad. I think it's a spectacular failure. In a sense of something that is so good. drives me mad. I would not be a world at him. I would love to have the technical wherewithal to create something in the Polish world, something similar, not quite the same thing. But I don't know how to do it. And I've spent a lot of time looking talking to people about it. But I'm I'm a lawyer, and I'm a businessman owner, I suppose. I'm a political nerd. I don't have any technical skill whatsoever. And therefore I'm stuck. I couldn't even articulate the problem well enough to put a team together. And I sounds like you can do exactly that.
Yes, actually. Yeah, like I wanted to interview as like experienced policy user but i i I guess you know, we we we could discuss harmonica as well. If you are interested in that I can tell you more about my strategy about my vision.
I'm very interested. I'll tell you use this conversation how you think is best to use as you
Yeah, so if you don't mind, I will talk about Polish today. And we could schedule another meeting where I will try to tell you about more about harmonica. And so, you know, I would love to Yeah, I would love to get feedback from you and maybe would, you know, we could discuss how it could be deployed in the UK, or something like that.
I'd be very happy. That make sense. Shoot.
Okay, cool. So I'm very, very excited to know that you are the most experienced policy user in Europe. It means that
I think I can't think of anyone else anyone else.
I yeah, this is like exactly what I'm looking for when I'm trying to recruit people for interviews. I need power users. So I'm very lucky to have you. Can you tell me what when you started using college like what's When? When was it
was ended 2020 around that? So do you Yeah. Background. I come from a conservative sort of right leaning house. My parents are low level conservative politicians, counselors, and I will talk politics, politics, politics. I went to much University studied politics, philosophy, economics. And I did the traditional, you go left and I you know, went to Marxist meetings communist meetings to join the Labour Party, chair, Labour Party in my town. Some demos as a trade union guy, trade union. Officer, a traditional lawyer. Like Jeremy Corbyn, I stood for Labour lots of times last last terms. It's a long winded answer, but it is relevant to the question. Then, when Jeremy Corbyn the Labour Party went to sleep, I left and I helped out change UK which was the the pro remain group and then I joined a liberal Democrats for about a time and I left them after a year I don't fall out with people i i just realized about myself that the world is at his political parties are a very stupid idea and their institutional way of thinking, and nobody really fits into any of the political party policies. They cannot. The parties have changed dramatically. And the Internet has allowed everybody to explore their personalities, their sexual preferences, their genders, all sorts of things fabulous. We realize how complicated we are as humans, and yet we're stuck with this. Two or three parts of choice. And intellectually didn't make any sense to me at all. And I when your parents are conservatives, and you've been a Labour Party, you're friends with the Labour Party. They hate each other. Everybody knows that. But they are what they all want the best for the country. But there's this hatred, sense. So my friend and I, we were looking at my friends at Tech in the tech world, Sanjay and we were talking about this problem. We could see that even in North Yorkshire which is very traditional. The banks were closing and older people like people in 80s and 90s. Were doing that banking online. They were using zoom with their grandchildren are thinking, Well, if you're going to bank online, then you're going to vote one vote online. The direction of travel is definitely online voting. What is there out there? Located polis now is about yet into 2020. And we're going to set up a tech party or political party with no policies other than to find a collective wisdom. And we weren't going to we didn't do that because my health wasn't good. So instead, I just founded a nonprofit. And I decided to do long winded answer out in but Sanjay helped me to pick up from GitHub, the students on the the from the competition of Oxy project and make it anonymous. And that's the only real innovation we made. And we put our version of policies on GitHub for the world to see as he's supposed to. And we're happy to do that. Because I am a lawyer, been lawyer for 20 years and I look at everything through the prism of risk. Lawyers always looked at the risk risk risk, and I've done a lot of data claims as a litigator, I've sued people for data breaches. And I thought, well, if you can have political data, political data is almost as sensitive as people's breast size or penis size or gender, you know, sexual predilections like they are it's the most sensitive data. So if you don't know who they are, if it's anonymous data, by understanding of GDPR is it doesn't the UK versus the US, UK. When we look at GDPR anonymous data is anonymous is not covered by GDPR and policy and Swedish as long as they're doing it anonymously. I feel horrible with each other and give the opportunity to say my MP is a pedophile. I think in his book papapapa completely wrong once you've made it anonymous. And this is the major learning played anonymous when you weren't having to defend yourself or attack anybody. And you weren't scared of being canceled. You were honest. And the data was the honesty of the data was amazing. I think it's better. Policy is best done anonymously, unless the platform is totally trusted.
Interesting, yeah. We also want to make, like enable anonymous sessions in with our chat bot, so that people would feel completely safe. And yeah, this is like additional validation, basically, no hypothesis. But okay, so you started using policies back in like late 2020. And you have run, like a number of instances, I guess. Since then.
No, really one main instance. I have plastic. Okay, probably something 250 conversations. I don't know I'm not counted.
Okay, so 250 like EVAnnex basically,
right now resume is still available to click on. So this is not mostly still open.
And when was the last one
that was being used all the time.
Still using them? Yeah. So
projects on at the moment. possibly my favorite one is in the North Ohio. There's a organization there called Dinner fight. And the word fight is crossed out and they call it dialogue. So dinner with a fight or dialogue. And it's an American organization, and they have dinners literally dinners in a restaurant, and they will you go to discuss a tricky talk. And it's facilitated and you change places who sitting next to and you share views in a safe space. And they've reached out to me and they've learned to polish conversations. The first one was about religion. And, you know, in a very good way, you know, the religious is a big question and that's interesting, but the second one was on gun control. And that was amazing. It's my favorite one. And the it's moderated brilliantly by them. About 6070 people voting and we've, we've found consensus on the question of gun control between NRA would you like me to to party, extreme right wing, pro Second Amendment types. And, you know, people are in control, we found consensus. And that's circulating, he's paying, they're paying for that a little bit. Not lots and that has been run in a very different way than what I've seen previously, the way that it's moderated and there's me as the host of the incidence, I've seen what people moderate it in all sorts of ways, and it's fascinating how people moderate it. It's like a wine if you're into I'm not into wine, but if you're into spicy food food, or because I think it's the everyone has a different way of moderating. This is interesting and the way he changes his statements and how we engage with audiences. Another one I've gotten a moment of non disclosure agreements and I can't tell you who it's for but the pharmaceutical company that are using it, to on their patients, and with their doctors to work out what is the best way of treating that disease. Now, approximately 15% of population has a rare disease. But there's something like 12,000 rare diseases. So rare disease might have be something like I think I got diabetes might go weirdly, even though it's not that rare, but there's lots of ones that people never heard of. So on the middle, there's not enough funding. And they can never bring enough people together. So they they're paying 500 pounds ago, her conversate conversation and they're set on moderating it themselves. And they've done their first one on this particular and they are a heavily regulated organization because you're not allowed to give drugs to people, and you can't incentivize doctors to promote those drugs. So it's highly regulated, and I can't see the data really. But they found points that they didn't know about it. And they were going to start off with just two but now they're thinking of doing it with their cancer drugs as well. And I think this is a major thing that's not being used is the harvesting of experience when it comes to doctors and medicine. And it's very scientific, but yet very scientific way of gardening you know, in downloading all this from retiring Doctor would you let them die without having mind brains? It's just fenders me Yeah, hold
on to intelligence, right.
abductors. Yeah, exactly. We experienced without you being double blind trials and millions of pounds. And the money in sight in medicine delicacy only goes where there's going to be lying to me like a Pfizer vaccine. If it's all suddenly when there's only 200 patients put 3 million pounds of research into it. So there's no research, but you could make, you know, massive improvements just by bringing people together. It's so simple, but like these are very clever people are term and they are not using the technology that is available. It's really terrifying, actually, and if I follow just that thread a little bit, I've lots of zooms in people, people in the democracy and tech space. Everyone I meet is like you ought to probably speak 10 languages as a PhD. makes lots of clutter people and knows anybody new speak house. And they say they tell me they're experts in Polish or whatever. And you ask them well, how many Polish conversations you've learned and they'll say no, they've studied it. But we've never actually gone and done anything. And it drives me completely. That people are trying to perfect things. And if I could give you any tip would be build stuff and then iterate and iterate and iterate and iterate. And just give people what they want. Don't be scared, basically. And like failure is good. Like, you know, Edison with a little was like 2000 experiments and 2000 and first you have the light bulb. And I've seen that a Roxy techspace not enough people doing what the computation on the Roxy project have done.
Yes, can you hear me?
Yes, I kind of just go off about I'm still incensed and angry and excited. I sometimes eat for far too long. Forgive me.
It's fine. I'm completely on point. I just want to ask you. So first of all, you mentioned that kind of moderation slash slash facilitation that people can do in different ways and some of them are more masterful at that. And I'm very, very interested in this in this topic. I don't know if you know, how much time you have left. Home for how long we can talk about it, but yeah, cool. Good. So I'm curious like if you like, have you facilitated Paul, his conversations yourself or maybe you know, someone in the UK who have done that. Also, and what do you think is a good what do you think is good facilitation, like what is what what good facilitators share? What do they have in common?
is a big question. So let me give you the best wisdom I have about moderation. Yes, please.
Suppose so when I stood in Selby against the by election. That was the art of it. I assume you're not I've noticed this feel free to follow me on your profile. I'm assuming you have your Russian maybe originally. You must give. I only asked if I don't know how much you know about British politics. So I'm conscious. I might be using terms like if you talk to me about Russia policy. I wouldn't know anything.
I guess I don't know much about British politics. So Okay.
Well, that's my that's what I know most about. And so when I stood in the by election, now by elections to elect an MP now normally in the UK, you have a general election, and they'll be won this year in November or December. Yes. And we've got seven MPs. And the prime minister can decide when a general election is called. But if an MP buys or is kicked out, or resigns, it triggers a by election. And Boris Johnson's right hand man was in the constituency, three miles from where I live. And I just sold my law firm so I founded a few law firms and sold them I sold my law firm, so I have some money. And I was working on the crowd wisdom project, and then suddenly is a by election in next door constituency. So a 650 constituency and the one next door to me, is available, and it's the first time there's a by election. Since chat GPT into public consciousness in the UK. So I thought right then I'm going to stand I'm not in a party. I've always wanted to have a go. No regrets, and I will learn a lot. So I Delphis the AI powered candidate and I knew two things would happen when I did that. First one is I knew that the whole world would want to know about it. And that's exactly what happened. I was we went around the world. I was in newspaper in Taiwan and Washington, New York and Singapore coming to my house. On Saturday, obviously the new the new international news just lapped it up and I'm fascinated. And the national press in the UK was interested. I also knew that in this traditional area of stunning it and I was gonna get hated. And that's exactly what happened. So I didn't have a team it was just me. And I had to quickly assemble a team, learn election law, and Stan put a website together. And the idea was I was going to collect the wisdom of the people of the area and then create their manifesto and that's exactly what I and I worked with a few friends, data scientists, tech people, Facebook, people, social media, put teams together, I paid for them all other than a scientist and we collect a dozen lots of data and put a manifesto out and it's I think it's the first election candidates. Ai generated manifesto ever. And he was very progressive. And it's amazing. And I think I should be written about in the history books for years forever, because it's an it was such an interesting manifesto. Is it outstanding? Yeah, go my website. Andrew gray. Okay. Look at my phone, and you'll see all the data all the data is on there. So, this is a long winded answer. I'm sorry. But when I stood that date, some massive areas to best is one of the biggest constituencies in geographical terms. So it spans basically North Yorkshire relative to South Yorkshire to Western East bang in the middle. And it doesn't really have an identity as a result. So there was 100 villages in the area, and three towns. So I've set up 46 Polish conversations for the big 46 villages. I sell three town conversations, and one cross culture and the conversation on general politics and the law still available on my website. So those conversations so when the statements were coming in, but to your question about moderation, rather than I wanted it to be not me, who was moderating them. So, in an ideal world Artem you would have a playing a Plato would call it some philosopher kings. You know any Plato, Plato, philosopher king, you'd have philosopher kings, looking at moderation in Quick Time, and agreeing or disagreeing to lead through. In this occasion, I had to let my friend do it, too, because some of it was gonna be critical of me. And there was quite a lot of criticism of me on the on those statements, which was fine, and I let my friend let me know as long as it didn't hit our five rules, and I'll tell you about our five rules in a second. Genuine, you can vote on it. So I created this manifesto. They were not my friends. They weren't you weren't even my supporters. And when there's a question statement, which we need more candidates like Andrew Gray, really 20% of people agreed. I didn't, so I can do or not. So that was really interesting. The, the the power of the honesty. An ideal way to moderate is through a third party is first thing. Second thing, the five rules that I've established that everybody must follow if they're using constants. You must remember I am a lawyer, and I look at risk. I am a lawyer and I look at risk from like Ebola that we can't allow anything that's defamatory on the you know, my ears are pitiful, right? So nothing makes sense. Number Number two, you unless there's a very good news, you should not target statement at someone. Even if it's a positive thing. Like I think we should have more David Beckham's. Like, no, don't don't name anybody. Let's keep it away from aiming somebody Second of all kind of connected. You shouldn't try to identify yourself in the statement, even though it's anonymous. So art have you got there on the polygon? Right. My name is Artem. Zhiganov. I'm from Moscow University and I think bla bla bla bla bla. I will know that that is you because it's anonymous. But we wouldn't let that because we don't want to get into defending someone attacking somebody. So there's no naming naming of people. Yeah. Thirdly, again with my lawyer hat on. You don't want anything that's suggesting anything unlawful like we should go and storm Congress we should go and do something a lot illegal. And then there's probably fourth rule, I forgot what it was. But the last one is generally well. So yes. Fourth one is statements are generally better than although that varies. Sometimes you need a question in there and then the statement but lastly, try to keep it broadly on topics and nothing a wildly off topic. So if we're talking about should the road outside this house be 80 miles an hour, and someone says Hi, Domino. The Moon The moon is made of cheese. Okay. Don't allow that silliness in. When you're moderating though, you've got to be quick because remembering my ins my instance, is anonymous. And there are lots of positives that I put the negative is when there are new statements. How could you tell the person who'd already voted that there are new statements to go and vote on? So you must think about what did they say on Facebook, that is say on a news release. To get by an email from somebody, WhatsApp, whatever it would be, you have to go second organization tell them to go icon to vote. And often when people are voting, they're voting in batches. So for statements made, bam. If you don't approve it, you can lose vast amounts of data. So on one of the big policy conversations I did in my town, we had 24,000 votes. It was open for seven days, and it was about the renovation of the town center. In this case, what worked really well it was one of the newspapers, the online newspaper, put it on their website and the iframe within their own article, which are great, but they were so excited. Like every time there's another like 4000 votes, they would update the article to say another 4000 votes. And they would also know when is the optimal time on Facebook on social media to post it so obviously we're pushing for in the morning. He posted on Saturday at six at night. When he did that. And we got about 10,000 votes. People then getting back to the conversation so at those times me as the moderator had to be there and ready. Because otherwise you lose 1000s of votes. Yeah, moderating. Sort of speed of moderation is really, really important. Yes, debates about moderation. Timing. Yeah. So it's, I don't think there's some absolute rules to this ECU. I think what policy is wonderful combined that we see great machine learning but also with an intelligent human meal. Whoever is doing it, it brings their own style to the politics. That's why it's like its own wine. And that's why each one is like a flavor to success. Now, you're obviously smart enough to be bilingual. Probably trilingual or Quadra lingual you embarrass me with me like
no no bilingual, just bilingual. bilingual. I learned French but I forgot I forgot everything.
So imagine you. You're not that well educated and you can't write that well in English is hard to would. An anonymous Polish allows people who can't articulate themselves very well to say what they want without fear of embarrassment. And that's really powerful. So a good way to either seed apologists or to moderate it is often to allow poorly written statements through and one of the reasons I many reasons to door policies and this is why I said why political history of being right wing centered and I'm a bit of everything, as I think most people are a bit of everything is to me, the as a lawyer, you see an eye when you're going through a policy you see a question from so many angles. There's no other way. I've never seen something that you can see and question from so many points. For example, we've ran a policy in Wandsworth in London, about clean air, and that there we used a citizens assembly to populate the populace. And then the Council put the policies out to people. So everybody wants but who wants to give up their car? Basically nobody. And it's not a right wing question or a left wing question, is it everybody wants all of those things? How would you find consensus on that polis, the average person voted 98.5 times can you say again, the average voter voting 98.5 times either agree, disagree or pass? That is the bet has different statements. Different states and the people occur? The we started with something like 40 statements, and people in ones we've created another six on documents. And I think we allowed 600 of them and so some people were voting 500 times. I mean, like, that's amazing. Just and the going a bit of a segue, but back to Ohio. The guy in Ohio has real interest is people Excellent. He says he wants people to exercise their, their muscle in their brain for seeing an art question from multiple perspectives. If you voted 500 times on the question of clean air or 500 different statements like you have really interrogated that question like you built a muscle. You realized as you go forward in your life, every problem that you see is not black and white. It's complicated. You change somebody's mind when they voted that this the more pathways in their brain had been rewired to see complexity is astonishing. Like I gotta say 98.5 times. Well. Yeah.
You know, actually, I wanted to ask you one other thing. So it's also about just like engaging people. Yeah, like, did you find it difficult to make? You know, those people in your constituent constituency? Actually use Paulus like, open it in on their browsers. Like maybe you knew that you have like 1000 people and then only like 100 of them actually participated in this conversation like, Did you did you feel Did you have any like difficulties or did you struggle with anything in terms of like just engaging people into this process? Okay, so
when you stand in a lecture to become an MP in the UK, pay 500 pounds, and you got to sign a lot of paperwork and get people to agree that you could stand once you paid your 500 pounds. The Lord mail will deliver a leaflets to every single one of the houses for three, no stamps and no delivery costs. So all I need to do so I printed out had a beautiful leaflet delivered created at the Royal Mail delivered 14 and a half 1000 to every single house. So that's one of the ways to get people to vote. And then obviously went viral on in the newspapers interestingly, just in the byelection the BBC was hopeless. The left wing just hated it. And the more right wing depress the more the wasn't it very interesting even though the manifesto it created was very left wing. It was the right wing Daily Mail that put it out there about was about voter so i would i How many voters we got only got into the hundreds of voters obviously doing data requests was 1000s of data points. When it came to social media, this is a useful point now clouds of independent candidates, not in a party. Because of the story of Cambridge Analytica in the Brexit referendum, which you probably are aware of the 1016 Yeah, yeah. This so the story goes. There was lots of Russian interference in that election through bots and Cambridge Analytica and and one I don't know whether any of its true, it doesn't really matter, for it doesn't matter for the purpose of this conversation. But it's its outlet, but there was interference. Now, so Facebook, messenger and others have difficult to put any political ads on the platform. So for me to stand my plan when I stood in July, I'm not that interested in that, but I'm trying to give you useful information rather than is how to give Facebook through my social media. People who just do social media is that job. It's given my driving license passport, letters from the council and for them to allow me to have a page. And then what I wanted to do in that first week, it was I wanted to spend 4000 pounds on the first week to get the people to my platform. I wanted to have this virality This is weird. Meta stock would only let me spend about four pounds a day. Because I know it was really unfair. Like they didn't want my money because I don't really want it to regardless and to get outside interference. So I couldn't get enough people via social media to start clicking on the creating the data as much as I wanted. I see what happened no to what yeah, that was very, very annoying because I wanted this like once Newspeak house and Canary Wharf to go, oh, that's a cool campaign. We're going to support that campaign in Yorkshire because when there's a general election, there's going to be lots of Andrew Granger in this. The theory going surely is if you're a candidate who's done something really original, you've got fame. So you got awareness. Second of all, you're not in a party system and most people hate the parties. So you haven't got that worry. Third of all, you've got very popular policies because the people have given you policies whereas total agreement like every if you did it my way, and you didn't do it through the toxic prism of AI as a label. Everybody would get elected, you'd win. And as So, so the social media networks I really stopped that from from going through virality what else was it about the how do you get people to come to your site? I think I think sheduled link for the Harrogate district consensus Yeah. In a way that I would. If money was no object. I would create one of those in every single town and find somebody a bit like me who's happy to go on Tik Tok, and just talk about the issues and put them on to trust and just have all the data there. Totally free for everyone to see. And that's my tip. I like to pull this approach and I stand by it is it's showing sharing all of the data that you've developed that you get, I didn't have any more access to data than you do if you go on there and look at the links. I like that theory. But as a as an aside, I have to speak. I was asked to speak at elite digital festival a few months ago. And as a banker, I told him when I explained what I had done and how I'd lost how I did it. And his view was well, if you only had 250 voters in the constituency, which is what I did. There's about 80,000 people in the constituency. How can you say that? That's enough data. And on the face, that sounds like a reasonable point, right? That's not enough data for 20 policies to go or it's not the answer. So you got to hear
maybe that data is not representative enough. Like it's Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
A Polish doesn't do very well. So you know, it doesn't do demographic data. Well, you know, are you blind? Are you gay, straight, man, woman just don't know. And you can't say for certain that the voter is even in the constituency, because it's anonymous. You could have voted on it and you've probably never been to cell B. So that so we had the objection. The debate is in the UK. There were lots of opinion polls like there are probably everywhere. And in a traditional opinion poll in the UK, you either have 1000 or 2000 people normally told out of 70 million out of 650 constituencies that's either two people because it's your three people polled a 250 and it was looking for consensus rather than a majority. So I was very comfortable that the data that I had was because there's leaflets in discriminate which house they went to, and the media was across all media like that. It wasn't just tech people who were interested in the in the campaign, as well as people not liking me the data was they don't like me, because they don't like the AI vibe. I mean, I was being cheeky. I mean, you know, it's only machine learning is that very basic AI, isn't it? Sometimes we might even say it's not even AI but like if that was the machine learning candidate, no one would have cared. They had a candidate they cared but they didn't like me.
Yeah, it makes sense.
That that's the thing is, AI is so toxic to so many people, that it's almost always better to not talk about it, actually. And the way that I think politics works really well is just sharing people on link and giving them very little information and they just see it and addicted. So we're looking, you know, in Wandsworth to get 98.5 times. That's an obsession. To get to that level. Like there was no barriers to entry. You didn't need to log in. You need to prove who you were, where you lived. You just saw like that Dingle Alexa statement thing like that one thing and it was just a more instinctive you voted or comments staple DATA statement. I think the better it is rather than really thinking about it.
I'm conscious of time, like we've been talking for almost an hour now. Are you? Do you have to go
for about 10 minutes with us via
Uh huh. So, um, you know, I'm just curious. What do you think about other solutions in this space? I mean, for instance, you know, there's like citizenship prod project in Iceland and they developed, I think, very interesting. tool called all your ideas. I don't I'm curious if you if you get if you have anything to say about that tool.
I'm aware of it. I don't know anything about it. Other than that, and having been a political nerd all my life and then being in this sort of AI space. Nobody has anything better than polish. And polish to me is ancient it's like using dial up insight. I cannot believe that policy is the best that I've seen in given that it was created 10 years ago. I think it's I think it's utterly destroyed. I'm so angry about it. I don't tend to get angry but I am angry about that and it hasn't improved. As much as I would like it to. hasn't taken up as much of the marketing as well as it could have been. Yeah, and I think the mistake they made, but I admire I totally admire computational democracy, people. I really, really do think a genius on there are altruistic, so I don't I'm not criticizing their motives in any way. motives are pure. But it seems to me that you need a profit making venture. So that to be the financial backing to be able to push it where it needs to go. And to not give it venture funding, or profit motive means that it doesn't go as fast as it ought to go. So I put up with like a lot of people like you answered with a lot of calls similar to this one with people all around the world. And more or less, I would say to them, don't do the mistake aid and do a nonprofit NGO for for profits. It will turn some people off to them however, the I think you're more likely to be successful.
Yeah, well, my current thinking is to make it like open source. But with premium features that like enterprise clients, for instance, might pay for. So it's like, open source and yeah.
Well, so my thoughts about the grid for the market is any grouping of people need something like polis? So I've used it in my law firm. So with my law firm, we got 30 staff. And we started using it during the last bits COVID To work out COVID policy, because some people were terrified COVID I'm going to die, or I'm going to bring it home and kill my mom with it. And yes, some people who thought RFK you're never get the job, but it's all made up. It's a lovely week, it says, you know, Bill Gates experiment, you had everybody in a law firm like that. How would you respect all their views? How can people say honestly what they think without getting locked up? So we used it, then a law firm and we had a I was the owner and the founder and we had a fight. I and one of the statements was do does truth legal law firm. Yes. Can you say anything he wants to the bosses? Yes. Well, fantastic. One of the statements that then came through is I am I am annoyed that the stationery cupboard is a mess, right? Nobody's ever said it before. I guess everybody agreed that the stationery cupboard is annoying everybody. And yet, even though he's sort of in a flat hierarchy, and it wasn't a big deal, it wasn't kissing everybody off. And I'm thinking how many organizations are the words flat you? No one's ever said it because it seems petty to say something and if you're a new person in an organization, it's hard to speak up. If you're shy. It's hard to be called often for when it's harder to speak up. Second Language, it's harder to speak up. Yeah. And then, you know, in a boardroom, it's very difficult as well. In boardrooms, people are sort of defending their own territory. Like they're the most dishonest places, in a way and I think when you add anonymity, we found that the staff even knew that I ran the company. It was the new Animus. So I've been trying to sell policies like a staff survey tool, and done a dreadful job of it. People still use our survey monkey, and it's bollocks. This policy is far better for that
than the
benefit of it any should smash you better far better SurveyMonkey no survey monkey got bought iPad for a billion. It's crap is totally crap. Policy is far better is where it can do. So I know that there is a unicorn in this field at him and I'm always hoping that someone like Artem Zhiganov would ring me up and say Oh, Mr. Bae, you know a bit about this world. We need a lawyer and entrepreneurial guy who's a bit of an idiot and we'll try anything. Come on, come and join our tennis team harmonica wins. We'll give you 10% And this unicorn Yeah, you put 1000 hours of time in and it becomes a unicorn all it gets gobbled up and just destroyed. But I'm hoping for because I know it exists. I know it's gonna be there. Yeah, same thing.
Yes, exactly. And I will be happy to share some equity with you if you're interested.
That's some kind offer. I would love to know more about you and your your to come from what I want to do. I mentor people as well for so let's find a mentor but I can't I'm not technical limits me in any way. You're gonna talk to me like this. I applied for a job open AI three weeks ago to be their elections manager. I didn't get precise so salary relink. The salary was a quarter of a million a year.
Nice. I guess they were looking for someone like for the US politics, US election.
Now it wasn't just us. It was Europe, the Middle East actually. But they wanted somebody really technical and I see nothing. I can't even use Excel very well. But But I think he might have missed the point that I think we do need someone who sees politics and all the angles. I think that would be a mistake on their part. We'll see that the experts
Yes, well, it's yeah, it's been a privilege to talk to you and I'm so grateful for for this conversation. We've covered so much. Like really, really important aspects of this I don't know space. I mean, since making deliberation, and yeah, I just feel very, very grateful. I'm going to turn on my camera, but I will probably freeze
cool. Yeah, let's see if we can work together help. I'm gonna help you out. If you prove to me that you're going to make a difference on planet Earth. Fabulous and you're a decent human being and your team of decent people and humans I'd be eager to assist I'd do one a few projects but I'm gonna make some don't just do it. For some time, though it was never please don't lose hope. Just have a go and be good and be thankful.
I don't think this is like one of the most important things for, you know, for our civilization to survive. Yes. Just to learn how to find common ground how to cooperate.
Absolutely. Most people agree on most subjects and then you go online and you think everybody is an idiot. And then you look at the media and think everyone's polarized and everybody's worried about trans matters or whatever it is. I'm not being unlucky or pro trans but the real most people aren't talking about here but it's all the rage you read on the media. Strange. There was a tick total recently. Someone's asked the question people London, how many people what percentage of people in the UK again, and always London as well. I only think about 40% and it's 1.5%. Now how many people trends in America? Oh, it's about 20% And now it's like naught point 1% Like it's completely distorts really important issues, actually. And that saddens me when most people agree on most things, but it doesn't feel that way. Yeah, yeah, sorry. I guess so.
I would, I would love to continue this conversation with you and I would love to tell you more about harmonica. So let's try to you know, just find a convenient time slot maybe next week, if that works for you. Yeah,
I bought a business in Spain recently. So I run a school in Spain and then I can work from Spain next week. tend to just I didn't I don't have many things in my diary. I always keep it quite very precise who I spend time with. Okay.
Yeah, sounds good. And thank you so much, Andrew. gonna
share anything nonconfidential with me, that's super if you want me to send you I've got access to lawyers NDAs and stuff, if any legal flux term like precedence, asked me I've access to the best that the UK has from a Thomson Reuters scheme. So like, you know, shareholders agreements not necessary for me it wasn't coming with me what? employment contract GDPR privacy notices, like I can get you those for free. If you gave me a simple shopping list. It would take me a few minutes. I wouldn't put them around together. I wouldn't. I wouldn't make them bespoke. Unless it was like as a financial reason to search for stuff that you can access online. Just ask me Okay, good. Okay, yeah. Bye bye.
