Concepts in depth

Delegation means that anyone can choose to copy what someone else is voting on, which can be called 'delegating your vote' to someone else. The delegator can override the delegate's vote at any time or delegate to someone else instead. Delegation capitalises on the benefits of direct democracy, such as the possibility of direct influence and accountability, but without requiring everyone to invest time, energy or expertise in every single issue. Delegation has been shown in empirical studies to be effective in harnessing expertise and making informed decisions. But unfortunately, delegation has never before been effectively tested on a larger scale because no one has previously built a good digital platform for the purpose...

Simple Yes/No votes do not capture nuanced information about participants' preferences. This can lead to sub-optimal decisions for everyone. It can also carry the risk of "tyranny of the majority" over minorities. To avoid this, there are good alternative voting methods that allow participants to express nuanced preferences in a balanced way at the cost of reduced influence on other issues. Such alternative methods have been shown in empirical experiments to encourage participants to be honest, to make balanced prioritisations between different options and to cooperate...

Developments in artificial intelligence have created unique opportunities to use artificial agents to streamline and improve decision-making. But can we really trust AI? How do we know what an AI agent's goals are? How can we be sure that AI is working in our best interests? Flowback solves these problems by having both human and artificial delegates and predictors evaluated and assessed continuously by a human majority. Agents who don't act consistently, who aren't transparent, honest or who have goals no one else shares quickly lose all influence. This means you can rest assured that neither AI nor humans can abuse their knowledge or power.