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# System prepended metadata

title: Polis User Notes

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# How Polis Is Used


## General Notes
* Most Polis surveys seem to cluster participants into two or three clusters (it’s possible for the default PCA to return up to ~5).
  * The “S4D AI” survey by CIP: Pro-regulation vs. pro-technology
  * The “What is a DAO” survey by RnDAO: Ideals oriented vs. structure oriented
* For an idea of which topics work well, recommend scrolling through this directory: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PnuFfLN8TNNA_7z83VAmczrmQYTzGEGA5hcQ9z5aP_8/edit?gid=0#gid=0
  * High level issues
  * Citizens’ assemblies
  * Game shows (coming from Taiwan)
  * Market research (rare, a few cases)
  * Surveys give a good cross-section of each cluster’s opinions. They do a good job of showing what opinions are common sense vs. contentious vs. generally rejected.
* However, conversations are not necessarily actionable, but mostly build awareness and common knowledge
* Polis lacks tools to drill down into specific personas’ opinions, and “slice and dice” the generated data
* Polis use / adoption today seems to be mostly consultative. Think tanks, NGOs, and civic tech organizers use it on an ad-hoc basis for specific issues that come up.


## Polis S4D Notes

* CIP (Collective Intelligence Project) ran a Polis survey with participants at the 2023 “Summit For Democracy”, a State Department hybrid in-person/virtual summit that also has a very active set of community side event tracks
* There were 177 participants
* The Polis PCA clustered them into two categories - 152 voters (85%) were pro-safety and pro-regulation, and 25 voters (15%) were pro-technology
* The first cluster agreed with statements like:
  * “Foundation models should be subject to inspection before deployment to the real world”
  * “Powerful AI systems pose a threat to humanity”
* The second cluster agreed with statements like:
  * “There is too much anti-AI hype”
  * “Conversations around Generative AI are too centered on fear”
* Both clusters agreed on better transparency, interpretability, and regulation
  * “We need more civil society-led initiatives - independent from corporate influence - to lead inclusive, democratic conversations about AI.”
  * “Even without further development generative AI will dramatically change many industries.”
* Clusters were not closely correlated with left-wing vs. right-wing political orientation
* Clusters were split on statements like: “I think it is crucial that the US beats China at AI.”
* The report is easy to read although low-level. I usually scroll to the “Majority” and “Metadata” sections first: https://pol.is/report/r3nhe9auvzhr36dwaytsk

## Other Tools

Remesh - https://www.remesh.ai/
More of a general survey platform.

AllOurIdeas - http://www.allourideas.org/
An open-source tool that asks you which of two options you prefer, and aggregates the pairwise votes into an overall ranking.

Viewpoints.xyz - https://viewpoints.xyz/
Lightweight, instant Polis-like tool for people to use to poll each other at meetings.

Full list of various forks, customizations, etc.: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PNlYoIyN1_jS7CpHDImHcA8qW4UFuEDLVZe0p_C6V0w/edit?gid=0#gid=0
