Divya Siddarth profile interview

Divya Siddarth is the Founder and Executive Director of the Collective Intelligence Project. We recently asked Divya a few questions for our latest Responsible Tech Guide, which you can read below.

“We need to build civic infrastructure now, create leverage points in AI development for public input, develop tools that make participation as diverse and responsive as possible, and prove repeatedly that collective intelligence produces better outcomes than closed development.”

All Tech Is Human tackles complex technology and society challenges like misinformation, hate speech, and child safety online. What do you think is the most pressing tech and society issue today? 

Humanity is not good at making wise collective decisions at speed and scale. We’re going to need to get much better, fast. While AI systems grow more powerful, the gap between those who build these technologies and the billions whose lives they transform continues to widen. We're seeing AI reshape everything from emotional support to civic engagement—our research found that one in three adults now uses AI for emotional support weekly, and nearly 40% trust their chatbots more than elected representatives. We need mechanisms that give people genuine agency over the AI systems shaping their futures.

Describe your current role. How does your work address complex technology and society challenges? 

As Executive Director of the Collective Intelligence Project, I’m focused on making sure that society has the tools and institutions for collective agency. Part of that is to bridge the gap between AI development and democratic participation. We create scalable mechanisms for public input into AI systems—from constitutional AI training with Anthropic to contextual evaluations with communities around the world with Weval. For instance, our alignment assemblies in Taiwan helped craft legislation addressing deepfake scams, while our Weval platform enables communities worldwide to have their input shape AI.. We're building the infrastructure for collective intelligence—proving that involving people at scale isn't just ethically necessary but produces better, more robust AI systems.

What does a better tech future look like to you, and how can we get there?

A better tech future moves from artificial general intelligence to augmented collective intelligence, where AI amplifies rather than replaces human agency. We’re pretty bad at this already, and we’re about to get worse. So we need to build civic infrastructure now, create leverage points in AI development for public input, develop tools that make participation as diverse and responsive as possible, and prove repeatedly that collective intelligence produces better outcomes than closed development. A lot depends on it.