A Plurality Atlas

Who is Divya Siddarth?

A researcher and practitioner who builds ways for the direction of AI to be decided through discussion among ordinary people, not only by a few companies and experts. A co-founder of the nonprofit Collective Intelligence Project (CIP), Siddarth has co-written much with Weyl and Tang, and the book Plurality cites Siddarth's papers.

Who should decide how AI is built and used? The companies that develop it? Experts in government? Divya Siddarth is someone working on a different answer to that question: building ways for all of us to decide together.

In short

Divya Siddarth is a researcher and practitioner who builds ways for decisions about how AI is made and used to be reached through discussion among ordinary people. Siddarth is a co-founder and the executive director of the nonprofit Collective Intelligence Project (CIP) [1].

In a TED talk, Siddarth said that, together with co-founder Saffron Huang, Siddarth left jobs at Google DeepMind and Microsoft to start CIP as an organization for creating new ways of democratically governing powerful technologies [2].

Connection to Plurality

Papers the book cites. Plurality lists several of Siddarth's co-authored papers in the footnotes of its chapters: the paper on "supermodularity" with Matthew Prewitt and Weyl (chapters 4-3 and 5-0), and "Plural Publics" with Shrey Jain and Weyl (chapter 4-2) [3][4][5].

Co-author with Weyl and Tang. With Weyl, Tang and others, Siddarth wrote "Prosocial Media" (2025, revised in 2026 as "Community by Design") [6]. In 2024, in a piece co-signed with Weyl and Anne-Marie Slaughter, Siddarth criticized Balaji Srinivasan's The Network State and proposed network societies instead of network states [1].

Working with Tang. Tang discloses: "One of us (Audrey) is a Senior Research Fellow at the Collective Intelligence Project" [7]. In August 2025, the two held a conversation on a podcast [8].

Links to Taiwan. Chapter 2-2 of the book writes: "Taiwan has pioneered convening, increasingly common around the world, of citizen participation in the regulation and steering of AI foundation models" (alignment assemblies) [9].

Main ideas

AI and democracy can help each other. In the TED talk, Siddarth argued that democracy is not an obstacle for AI but a means of solving its problems, and that AI and democracy can complement each other. The example given was "Collective Constitutional AI", carried out with the AI company Anthropic: an experiment in writing a "constitution" for an AI to follow, based on opinions gathered from the public [2][10].

Looking for a fourth path. CIP's white paper sorts the ways of advancing AI into three paths: capitalist acceleration, which gains progress at the cost of safety; authoritarian technocracy, which gains safety at the cost of participation; and shared stagnation, which gains participation at the cost of progress. Instead of any of these, the white paper sets as its goal a fourth path: collective intelligence systems that meet all three aims of participation, safety and progress [11]. The picture resembles the book's three paths, but it is CIP's own framework.

Intelligence is not one person's. In a 2022 talk, Siddarth said that today's AI mistakes intelligence for something complete within a single individual, whereas human intelligence lies in relationships between people [12].

Alignment Assemblies. In May 2023, Siddarth announced the launch of "Alignment Assemblies", gatherings that decide AI policy through citizens' deliberation [13]. → Alignment Assemblies

Supermodular goods. Some things become cheaper and more effective when provided to many people together than to each person separately. A 2024 paper argues that such goods do not fit the world capitalism is good at, and that they need ways of providing and governing them together that go beyond the choice between public and private [3]. → Supermodularity

Proof of personhood. In 2020, Siddarth co-wrote a paper surveying methods that use checks between people to prevent one person from pretending to be many [14]. → Proof of personhood

Further reading

  1. TED, "How AI and democracy can fix each other" (English, talk, 2023) — https://www.ted.com/talks/divya_siddarth_how_ai_and_democracy_can_fix_each_other
  2. Possible, "Audrey Tang and Divya Siddarth on outfitting democracy for the AI era" (English, podcast, 2025-08-13) — https://www.possible.fm/podcasts/audreydivya/
  3. "We should all get to decide what to do about AI" (English, blog, 2023-05-23) — https://www.cip.org/blog/alignment
  4. "We need network societies, not network states" (English, blog, 2024-05-20) — https://www.cip.org/blog/network-societies
  5. "Collective Constitutional AI" (English, paper, 2024) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.07814
  6. "Beyond Public and Private: Collective Provision Under Conditions of Supermodularity" (English, paper, 2024) — https://cip.org/supermodular

Sources

  1. Siddarth, Weyl and Slaughter, "We need network societies, not network states" (2024-05-20) — https://www.cip.org/blog/network-societies
  2. Divya Siddarth, "How AI and democracy can fix each other" (TED) — https://www.ted.com/talks/divya_siddarth_how_ai_and_democracy_can_fix_each_other ［CC BY-NC-ND 4.0］
  3. Siddarth, Prewitt and Weyl, "Beyond Public and Private: Collective Provision Under Conditions of Supermodularity" (2024) — https://cip.org/supermodular
  4. Plurality, footnotes in 4-3 "Commerce and Trust" and 5-0 "Collaborative Technology and Democracy" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-3/eng/ and https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-0/eng/ ［CC0］
  5. Plurality, footnotes in 4-2 "Association and ⿻ Publics" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-2/eng/ ［CC0］
  6. Weyl and others, "Prosocial Media / Community by Design" (2025) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.10834
  7. civic.ai, "Sources and further reading" — https://civic.ai/ ［CC0］
  8. Possible podcast (2025-08-13) — https://www.possible.fm/podcasts/audreydivya/
  9. Plurality, 2-2 "The Life of a Digital Democracy" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-2/eng/ ［CC0］
  10. "Collective Constitutional AI" (FAccT 2024) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.07814 ［CC BY 4.0］
  11. Collective Intelligence Project white paper (2023) — https://www.cip.org/
  12. Divya Siddarth, "The Case for Collective Intelligence" (iWORD 2022) — https://www.cip.org/blog/iwordci
  13. CIP, "We should all get to decide what to do about AI" (2023-05-23) — https://www.cip.org/blog/alignment
  14. Siddarth and others, "Who Watches the Watchmen?" (2020) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.05300
Related: What is the Collective Intelligence Project (CIP)? ・ What are Alignment Assemblies? ・ What is supermodularity? ・ What are ⿻ publics? ・ What is prosocial media? ・ What is proof of personhood? ・ Who is E. Glen Weyl? ・ Who is Audrey Tang?

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