This is a big old introduction for serious people: people who like to read, and then like to sit and think—who have time for all of that. People who don’t mind long, turgid sentences with annoying words in them like turgid. The problem is, these people, who I am so desperate to have read my book with a serious mind, are the exact type of people who are not inclined to just start reading a book, or blog, or podcast, called AI-Elfy, because they are in general not inclined to frivolousness, rhyming, and rainbow color schemes. They don’t need that. Well maybe you don’t need it to keep your attention focused, but I do.

The reason this book, which originally had nothing to do with elves, is now named AI-Elfy, is because Elfy is the name of the cute character who introduces you to the material, both in this book here and in the imaginary world of the narrative. And for those who aren’t keen on the elf, I do apolgoize. It’s just that, I’ve tried to picture this without the elf a thousand times before, but it always tended to unravel in a thousand strands of thought, as I try to explain novel ideas, anticipate preliminary questions, and paint the ultimate vision that I have for this enterprise. Elfy holds it together in more ways than one. And in the end, the only thing making it possible for me to have the confidence to write an introduction now for serious people like yourself, promising them a story that isn’t completely written yet, is because I believe in Elfy; I think he’ll be able to pull it off for me.

So, is an introduction necessary then? I think so, for some readers. A reader is entitled to some orientation and assurances as to whom they are getting involved with. But if your eyes start to glaze over and you start thinking about putting this down, that’s okay. Maybe you’re just not the kind of serious person who this introduction was written for. It's okay; you're probably more fun at a party. 

The purpose of this book is to change politics by introducing a new method of discussing issues, online and with all of us, leveraging the technology of the internet and AI. 

This change, the introduction of a new kind of conversation, is meant to both make the politician’s job easier, and the voter’s job easier as well. The politician’s job will become easier by giving them a platform, a set of priorities, determined by their constituents in a democratic forum, instead of asking them to craft a platform of talking points for their constituents to hear. The voters, then, will be able to speak their mind, and then hear out the candidates as they respond in an orderly way to the public’s concerns. Armed with this data, as well as any amount of assessments of the candidates they want to read from whatever news sources they trust, the voters will go to the polls having substantially guided the candidates’ platforms, and will be given the much simpler choice of determining which leader is more competent to carry out the public’s objectives.

I've been attempting to write this book, or something like it, for almost 20 years. It didn’t have anything to do with AI until last summer, and it had nothing to do with elves until a few weeks ago, in February 2024. In fact, in the beginning, this project didn’t have anything to do with technology at all.

This book stems directly from my architectural thesis project, begun in 2004. The point of the thesis project was to determine what was the best way to proceed with development of an empty street in a blighted city in the suburbs of New Jersey. After much research into idealistic communities, I came away with the thought that top-down planning was not ever the desirable route to develop a street in the spirit of community that I wanted. Therefore, I created not one design but a catalog of designs, which I said could be discussed at a public meeting designed to educate and listen to the public in an open way. The conversation that I imagined having was to be live and in-person at a community hall, not on a website.

It was only in 2006, when I had finished my thesis review, but still had to turn it into a book, that I began to think about the internet and its potential role in shaping the conversation. At the time, the internet was miles behind where it is today–hashtags would not be invented until the next year–and it was unclear how you could have an online conversation, accommodating all of the twists and turns that real conversations take. But here, in 2024, as technology has advanced leaps and bounds over the decades, it is finally advanced enough and is publicly available enough that I can look around and see it making my vision come true.

At its core, this book presents a method for organizing discussions by distinguishing between the following three basic elements of conversation:

• Goals, where everyone has an equal say, 

• Proposals, where the author’s professional credentials are objectively important, and

• Assessments, where a combination of lived and learned experience is relevant, and depending on whom you ask.

This conversation, made up of those parts, is placed within a navigational framework of topic, place, and lens. 

This basic structure has been in my head for a long time, and I’ve imagined many embellishments over the years.

The most recent addition to the system is the character of AI-Elfy. AI-Elfy is several things. First, AI-Elfy is the name of the platform: the place that exists, on your phone or computer or watch, where you can go to engage with this system. Second, your own personal elf, named Elfy, is a guide to the platform, helping you engage with it as much or as little as you like. Third, Elfy is your personal representative on the system, and also your passkey for representing yourself in official polls.

But see, this is what I mean: more questions are probably raised with that statement than answered. And this is how this has unraveled in the past, when I follow the thread and try to explain a bit more what Elfy is. All I really need to do in this introduction is get to a couple of key points that serious people may be harumphing about.

So, a note about AI: as much as I love and am fascinated by ChatGPT, I appreciate people’s concerns with it. I understand that nobody wants a world where computers take the place of people, where we become isolated from other humans, talking to computers instead. And I firmly believe that this won’t happen, both because I don’t think a computer is capable of ever satisfactorily replacing a human in a conversation, but also because I won’t let it happen, in this system.

The “AI” in AI-Elfy is limited to finding patterns between different users, with the goal of introducing users to engage with other users, or their Elfies as they speak their user’s expertise and opinions. In this way, I am hoping to not further the gap between people in our digitizing society; I am attempting to leverage AI to facilitate genuine discussions between real people, in a way that will bring intellectual and emotional wisdom to the forefront. You will not be reading opinions generated by AI; each opinion you encounter will be traced back to the person who originally said it, fostering a transparent and authentic dialogue. The AI will allow you to find different viewpoints, ones that challenge you when you want to be challenged but that do it in a way that feels productive and understanding. 

The point of AI-Elfy is to transform politics. But the point of transforming politics is to transform our society. My goal is that we can all bring about a bit of what we think we want the world to be like, and that this tool will help us enlist each other in affecting the change that we want to see but need some kind of common willingness and push to maintain the momentum and make the change happen. I am introducing AI Efly in a serial format because there is an urgency for me. Every year, and certainly every four years, that goes by where we don't start pulling together and solving problems stretches into another generation who has to deal with our unsolved problems. 

Furthermore, I like to hope that the beauty of what I'm trying to present here is that it does not need to be completely built for the ideas to take hold and for us to change politics. In fact, all you would need to do to affect the change that is described in the national storyline of AI-Elfy would be a simple website containing a poll, which the entire country could fill out, and which could then be independently verified or calibrated by the likes of Gallop and others to verify correlation to overall public opinion. This would then be heard by politicians as the set of “common ideals” defining a “middle way platform” that is discussed in this book. 

To conclude, this book was not originally about changing the world of politics. The thought was simply that the best thing that an architect could do on a street was not design a building–anybody can design a building. The thought was that the best thing an architect, or any professional, can do to improve their society is to go out there in the public, listen to the community, advocate for them, and educate them.

AI-Elfy is about these goals, and how most of the time, we share common goals; it’s just in the balancing act between two goals that we find all of our differences.

We should therefore celebrate the fact that we are all coming at things from fundamentally the same human perspective, the same values. It is in the specific implementation that we bring along our unique and valid perspective.

-Nathan William Wight, March 2024