Can We Fix How We Talk (and Listen) to Each Other? | Deb Roy | TEDxMidAtlantic

Key Concepts

• Cortico: A nonprofit organization and platform developed from MIT research, focused on creating communication spaces optimized for listening and understanding.
• Circles of Trust: Small, facilitated groups (4-6 people) where individuals share personal experiences and stories.
• Talk, Understand, Share Process: A three-step methodology for constructive communication:
  1. Talk: Facilitated small group conversations.
  2. Understand: AI-assisted analysis of themes and patterns from conversations.
  3. Share: Disseminating insights back to participants and potentially to the public.
• Voice Medleys: Audio compilations of transcribed conversations, often highlighting emergent themes.
• Conversation Maps: Visual representations of themes and their intersections across multiple conversations.
• Agency: The capacity of individuals and communities to shape their communication environments and influence outcomes.
• Social Fragmentation: The breakdown of social cohesion, often exacerbated by extreme and emotionally provocative voices amplified on social media.
• Constructive Communication: A communication approach prioritizing listening, understanding, and finding common ground over performance or debate.

The Problem with Current Communication Spaces

The speaker begins by highlighting a concern about the impact of AI on human thinking and agency, citing an example of AI translating Shakespeare into teenage slang as a "punch to the gut for human innovation." The core argument is that "writing is just thinking on paper," and if AI does the writing, it effectively does the thinking, leading to a loss of agency, particularly in educational settings.

Drawing on three decades of research at MIT in communication, from child language development to social media, the speaker points to the decline in genuine listening. As former Chief Media Scientist at Twitter, the speaker witnessed firsthand the evolution of social media and observed "startling and really disturbing patterns" upon returning to MIT, including "large-scale social fragmentation" and the "viral spread of false news."

The speaker argues that social media amplifies extreme and emotionally provocative voices, leaving "no room for nuance." This pattern has unfortunately "spilled into our in-person meeting spaces." The fundamental belief is that "hearing the humanity in others is necessary for our communities to function. It's necessary for our democracies to function." This necessitates a search for "something better than the options we have today."

The Cortico Solution: A New Kind of Communication Space

The proposed solution is a "new kind of communication space, a network that is optimized for listening, for understanding." This is the result of research at the MIT Center for Constructive Communication and the creation of the nonprofit Cortico. Cortico aims to translate this research into practice, having worked with hundreds of organizations to test and iterate a method focused on "real listening rather than performance." The speaker confidently states, "it works and I'm here to say that it's ready to scale."

The Talk, Understand, Share Process Explained

The core methodology is broken down into three steps:

Step 1: Talk

• Quiet Spaces: Individuals are invited by a host from their "networks of trust" to form small groups called "circles of trust."
• Group Size: Four to six people is considered ideal.
• Structured Conversation Guide: Participants use a guide that encourages sharing "personal experiences or stories."
• Recording and Transcription: Conversations are recorded and transcribed with consent.
• Focus: The emphasis is on talking "not as individuals, not in large unmoderated spaces, but in small groups that are facilitated." These can be in-person or over Zoom, as long as they are live small groups "hearing each other's voices."

Step 2: Understand

• Theme Identification: After collecting conversations with shared prompts, the goal is to "understand the themes or the narratives or the patterns that emerge across these small group conversations."
• AI Tools: Cortico has developed AI tools, "under the control of people in the community," to assist in this interpretive step.
• Outputs: These analyses are converted into "voice outputs like medleys and conversation maps."

Step 3: Share

• Back to Participants: The generated outputs are shared back with all participating groups to "see and discover the connections across those groups."
• Public Dissemination: With consent, "public media outputs and actionable insights" can be created to "shape public understanding and to shape public policy."

Real-World Applications and Case Studies

The speaker provides several examples of Cortico's impact:

• Frontline Project with Students: A project with documentary filmmaker Frontline involved college and high school students developing a campaign about AI's impact. They learned the "talk, understand, share process" to lift up peer voices, which will inform a Frontline documentary on AI.
  • Student Voices: Examples of student concerns about AI include:
    • AI potentially leading to a loss of discipline or creativity due to convenience.
    • The difficulty of deciding "what ability am I okay kind of giving to AI? Uh, and what abilities do I kind of want to retain for myself?"
    • Alarm at industries being replaced by generative programs.
    • The acknowledgment that AI doesn't "necessarily have to be this big bad evil."
    • The internal conflict of using AI for convenience and feeling guilty about it ("I still turn it in, but it like doesn't feel right to me").
    • The importance of being "intentional in what exactly we are relegating to AI."
  • Process in Action: Students created a conversation guide, facilitated peer conversations (in-person and Zoom), uploaded transcriptions to Cortico's tool, highlighted portions, and created a "code book" of themes and sub-themes. AI assisted in tagging, but the students made the final decisions.
• Maine Public Schools: High school students used this approach for student-led conversations that resulted in "policy changes in schools."
• New York City Planning Department: Cortico is working with NYC planning to surface community experiences near the Cross Bronx Expressway, informing the replanning of the area.
• NPR Collaboration: Journalists across the country learned the approach, conducted community conversations, and used the platform to identify themes that led to "a set of nationally broadcast stories on NPR."

The Cortico Model: Decentralized and Agency-Building

Over 300 partner organizations have utilized this listening approach. The underlying model is distinct from social media networks that drive viral change. Instead, it emphasizes:

• Community-Designed Prompts: Small groups use prompts designed by people within the community.
• Resonant Patterns: These lead to patterns that "sense makers lift up, interpret."
• Curated Outputs: Curators transform these into "voice medleys" and other media outputs.
• Training and Tools: Cortico provides "training guides and AI tools" to support individuals without specific expertise in these roles.
• Building Agency: A key objective is to "builds agency in people for people in communities to shape the communication spaces that they feel they need."
• Decentralized Approach: AI serves as "scaffolding to build these skills," not to replace people.

Scalable Networks and Future Vision

These networks can be connected to create scalable efforts.

• American Conversation Project: A large-scale effort announced recently, led by the National Conference on Citizenship, involving national civic organizations. The vision is "thousands of conversations with Americans across the country over the next year" with prompts like, "What does America mean to you? What do you hope it can become? What's something you can do where you live to help make that real?" The expectation is to discover "we have more in common than media and social media environment often leads us to believe."
• Broader Vision: Whether about America or AI, Cortico envisions a new communication space that can "reveal connections across our lives across the country and beyond."

The Impact of Rich Conversations

A final voice medley illustrates the immediate impact of these conversations:

• "Only when people feel understood can they understand others."
• Stories provide opportunities for problem-solving.
• People possess "so much wisdom," and creating space leads to "emergence that's really valuable and a lot of compassion."
• Respect for community knowledge: "the people in the communities know what they want and need... they know their community."
• Self-determination and self-organization: "We can self-determine and self-organize and say who we are cuz we are connected and we know what we want."
• Shift from individual to collective thinking: "we should stop thinking as individuals and work as teams and collectives and that we can be way more powerful that way."
• Reduced isolation and increased engagement: "makes you feel a little bit less alone and insular. you feel a bit more engaged with other people's thoughts and there's not actually a lot of disparity which is quite comforting."
• Vision of collaboration and reduced inequality: "network of people that are collaborating with each other, inspiring each other, sharing with each other in order to break the boundaries and reduce inequalities."
• The ultimate stake: "Humanity is what's at stake." The hope is for voices to create a "ripple effect."

An Ask to the Audience

The speaker concludes with a direct invitation to the audience:

1. Learn and Implement: Learn about the approach and receive support to bring it to your community for a topic you care about.
2. Host an AI Conversation: Download the evolved conversation guide for AI, gather a small group (neighbors, friends, family), have a conversation about AI's impact, and upload the recording (anonymously if desired). This contributes to a growing collection of AI conversations on the platform.
3. Join the American Conversation Project: Sign up to get involved in the upcoming launch of this large-scale initiative.

The speaker emphasizes that for those concerned about community health, democracy, or the need for better listening across divides, "there is something you can do. You can join us."