Danielle Allen
Professor of Public Policy, HKS;
James Bryant Conant University Professor, FAS
GETTING-Plurality
A part of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation, GETTING-Plurality is a multi-disciplinary research network linking philosophers, social scientists, computer scientists, legal scholars, and technologists
Governance of Emerging Technology and Tech Innovations for Next-Gen Governance (GETTING-Plurality) is a multi-disciplinary research network linking philosophers, social scientists, computer scientists, legal scholars, and technologists. We are building a unique collaborative that unites tech ethics initiatives at Harvard University with external impact partners across higher education and the tech industry, bringing philosophers and ethicists to the table for every project.
The network is housed in the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation.
Our Mission
We’re at a pivotal moment. To promote universal well-being, we need to promote the responsible governance of innovation and responsibly innovate the way we govern.
GETTING-Plurality seeks to advance understanding of how to shape, guide, govern, and deploy technological development in support of democracy, collective intelligence, and other public goods. Our focus is on how to do so, given the plural nature of human intelligence. We pursue foundational analysis and theory, field-building, and policy development to foresee and mitigate potential harms to democracy and to strengthen the public benefit and democracy-supportive effects flowing from technology innovation.
Research Areas
This network will convene multi-disciplinary teams to tackle questions of how to govern emerging technologies and how to deploy emerging technologies for governance from a multiplicity of viewpoints and expertise.
Leadership
Darshan Goux
Senior Lab Director, Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation
Sarah Hubbard
Senior Fellow, Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation
Allison Stanger
Senior Fellow, Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation;
Co-Director and Co-Investigator, GETTING-Plurality Research Network
Network Members
Tina Eliassi-Rad
Professor, Northeastern University
Eli Frankel
Research Coordinator, Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation
Zoë Hitzig
Junior Fellow, Harvard Society of Fellows
Saffron Huang
Co-Founder, Collective Intelligence Project
Uma Ilavarasan
PhD Candidate in Government, Harvard University
Shrey Jain
Researcher, Microsoft Research
Yu-Ting Kuo
Faculty Member, MIT and National Tsing Hua University
Seth Lazar
Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University
Woojin Lim
Researcher, Harvard College
Puja Ohlhaver
Researcher & Lawyer
Tessel van Oirsouw
Visiting Fellow, Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation
Aviv Ovadya
Affiliate, Berkman-Klein Center, Harvard Law School & Affiliate, Centre for the Governance of AI
Alexander Pascal
Senior Fellow, Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation
Nick Pyati
Strategy, Microsoft
Mathias Risse
Faculty Director, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy & Professor, Harvard Kennedy School
Bruce Schneier
Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy
Divya Siddarth
Co-Founder, Collective Intelligence Project
Charlotte Siegmann
PhD Candidate in Economics, MIT
Ajeet Singh
Physician Instructor and Clinical Informaticist, Rush University Medical Center
Meredith Sumpter
CEO & Managing Partner, Just Equity
Luke Thorburn
PhD Student, King's College London
Shlomit Wagman
Faculty Associate, Berkman-Klein Center, Harvard Law School & Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School
Glen Weyl
Research Lead, Microsoft Research, Plural Technology Collaboratory & Founder, RadicalxChange Foundation
Zachary Wojtowicz
Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology and Economic Theory, Harvard University
Kinney Zalesne
Former Co-Head of Corporate Strategy, Microsoft
Upcoming Events
Ash Center Open House
In-Person Event
Ash Center Foyer, Suite 200, 124 Mount Auburn Street
4:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT
The latest news, resources, and research
Cryptocurrencies and National Security: The Case of Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing
This Article reviews the anti-money laundering and counter-financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) framework and its application to cryptocurrencies. Then, it presents case studies demonstrating the important contributions that the AML/CFT toolkit has made to countries’ security.
Hybrid Intelligence: A Paradigm for More Responsible Practice
The authors propose an alternate approach to mainstream AI practice that broadens the focus beyond algorithms viewed in isolation to processes of human-algorithm collaboration.
Commentary
To Fix Tech, Democracy Needs to Grow Up
There isn’t much we can agree on these days. But two sweeping statements that might garner broad support are “We need to fix technology” and “We need to fix democracy.”
Podcast
Consumers vs. Citizens in Democracy’s Public Sphere
Attempting to balance the challenging trade-offs between individual rights and our obligations to one another.
Big Tech’s Rise to Political Power
An interview with Allison Stanger
Policy Brief
Bridging-Based Ranking
This report explores the potential of bridging and discusses some of the most common objections, addressing questions around legitimacy and practicality.
Commentary
The Web3 Decentralization Debate Is Focused on the Wrong Question
Fixating on the degree—rather than the type—of decentralization is leading us astray.
Decentralized Society: Finding Web3’s Soul
Web3 today centers around expressing transferable, financialized assets, rather than encoding social relationships of trust.
Policy Brief
How AI Fails Us
Researchers and funders should redirect focus from centralized autonomous general intelligence to a plurality of established and emerging approaches that extend cooperative and augmentative traditions as seen in successes such as Taiwan’s digital democracy project to collective intelligence platforms like Wikipedia.
Towards Platform Democracy: Policymaking Beyond Corporate CEOs and Partisan Pressure
Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms make incredibly impactful decisions about the speech of billions. Right now, those decisions are primarily in the hands of corporate CEO’s—and heavily influenced by pressure from partisan and authoritarian governments aiming to entrench their own power.
Aviv Ovadya proposes an alternative: platform democracy.
The Real Cost of Surveillance Capitalism: Digital Humanism in the US and Europe
Alison Stanger argues that the real threat to liberal democracies is not capitalism, but the growing inequalities that corporate surveillance in its unfettered form both reveals and exacerbates.
Truth from the machine: artificial intelligence and the materialization of identity
When AI is seen as a source of truth and scientific knowledge, it may lend public legitimacy to harmful ideas about identity.
Democracy’s Tripwire: Global Corruption and Whistleblowing in Europe and the U.S.
This paper compares whistleblower protection politics in Europe and the United States to bring into fuller relief the vital role insider truth-telling plays in combatting global corruption, keeping elites honest, and sustaining liberal democracy.