Enabling Large Scale Deliberation Using Ideation and Negotiation-Support Agents

This paper describes an ongoing Japan-US project that is developing the kind of advanced computer support for online crowd-scale deliberation that is needed to enable smarter and more connected communities. Our shared work has focused on addressing both these problems: (1) ideation: helping crowds more effectively develop potential win-win solutions, and (2) decision-making: helping crowds get to pareto-optimality in the solutions they select. In Japan, a discussion support system called COLLAGREE that facilitates free text discussions to achieve consensus has been developing. In US, an online tool called the Deliberatorium that integrates argumentation theory and social computing techniques to enable more effective crowd-scale deliberation has been developing. One of our immediate joint work is to integrate the facilitated free-text discussions of COLLAGREE with the structured deliberations provided by the Deliberatorium. We will also develop automated agents that enable better ideation as well as better decision-making.