Jad Kabbara - العربية

Social media spaces have been shown to cause social  fragmentation and polarization. Jad’s work involves the design  and implementation of new communication spaces that are  an alternative to social media. Specifically, his work focuses  on small-group dialogues. In-person or virtual conversations  are organized with community partners, led by trained  facilitators, and focused on people in rural and urban  communities alike whose voices and stories are often not  picked up in surveys, reflected in the media, or heard in  public dialogue.

He is using Generative AI to automate the  understanding of these community conversations at scale.  The primary motivation for his work is thus to seek new ways,  alternative to social media, to involve people in civil dialogue  and civic engagement in a safe and respectful environment  based on trust, and to use AI to automate the understanding  of the resulting conversations.