Democracy in the Age of AI (3/5): Your creative superpowers can help protect democracy | Sofia Ongele

0:00Sofia Ongele: Hey, it's Sherelle, host of TED Tech. Election season is here and this year there's a new player on the ballot. So I put together a playlist of talks around one urgent question. What happens when AI gets a vote? You'll hear how AI could hack the system we use to govern ourselves. Who we can trust when reality itself can be faked. Why your creativity might be one of democracy's best defenses. how we can govern a technology no one can fully predict, and how AI and democracy could actually fix each other. The stakes are real and the clock is running. So I hope you get as much out of these talks as I did.

0:50Sofia Ongele: TikTok is the search engine of the future. If you've spent countless hours on the app, you know what I'm talking about. It's a rabbit hole of popular dances, restaurant recommendations, home recipes, and helpful life hacks. If you want to learn how to spruce up your recipe for salmon bites and Cajun rice, there's a video for that. And while a useful information source for the mundanities of everyday life, one young student and her class of Gen Z activists want to level up what TikTok can do. They've been using social media to mobilize change in their communities, to make democracy fun, and to address injustice with digital tools.

1:31Sofia Ongele: And a little humor. I'm Sherelle Dorsey, and this is TED Tech. Today, we'll hear from digital disruptor Safiya Ngole as she takes the TED stage to share how social media and the world of influence can be the hallmark connector for civic engagement. Let's listen in.

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4:17Four years ago, yesterday, there was a shooting at my younger sister Jenny's high school, Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California. Jenny was lucky enough to see kids running when she was about to be dropped off by her carpool, so she stayed safe. But all of her friends were placed on lockdown, kids I've watched grow up and have known for as long as I can remember. In the hours that followed, parents waited at my city central park to reunite with their kids as students were released building by building, escorted by police and SWAT teams to the park. Three days later, there was a vigil at that same central park to honor Gracie Muehlberger and Dominic Blackwell, whose parents laid them to rest at the tender ages of 15 and 14.

5:05It was the largest gathering in my city's history. Despite the divisions in my hometown, we stood at peace with one another that night, yearning for a better future. This very American tragedy that we have had to witness time and time again speaks to a larger issue about democracy. Like many people in the face of tragedy, I wanted to do something. And to do something, to truly participate in democracy, we have to acknowledge that injustice is cyclical and that any fight of a neighbor is the fight of our own. But how do we, wherever we may be, with whatever tools we have, fight that fight? I've realized over the course of growing up that what we largely consider to be participating in democracy is honestly kind of narrow and unimaginative.

5:59We're taught that we can vote and run for office, which are both important, but what about those of us who can't because of our age, our immigration status, our class, not to mention the countless others facing disenfranchisement through voter suppression? The truth is, any of us of any age living in some semblance of a democracy or striving towards it possess the tools to have a voice in our governments and communities. It's just a matter of learning how to have agency with those tools. For me, that's been coding and social media. It's unconventional, but I found the most success in having an influence by using whatever's in front of me, really tuning in to my networks and communities, meeting people where they're at, and centering joy and fun wherever I can.

6:49And it works. Let me explain. In the case of this school shooting, the parents of Gracie Milberger and Dominic Blackwell began a push to have the two of them memorialized at the entrance of our Central Park. To me, and much of my community, this memorial was a no-brainer. To others, it was grandiose and highly inappropriate. That's a direct quote, by the way. And a number of local officials agreed with them, but that cannot and should not nullify the needs and the wants of the greater community. So, Gracie and Dominic's parents, determined to properly memorialize their children, created a petition and organized efforts to push our city council to approve the memorial.

7:32The petition got over 10 ,000 signatures, and people emailed the city in masses. Eventually, they approved, and we all thought we were done. But, as it turns out, the land that Central Park is on is owned by the Santa Clarita Water Board, so they have the final say. And a committee created to advise on that decision penned a seven-page paper on why they should actually reject the memorial. And we didn't even know about this or know this was still up for debate until the day they were supposed to vote on it. I was so unbelievably angry. How is it that the community can come together, organize, and finally get a win just for it to be rendered fruitless by a vocal minority with fancy titles?

8:23I wasn't having it, but I still felt powerless. I wasn't on the committee. I wasn't an elected official. I couldn't even tell you what a waterboard did. But like I said, I had these two sources of power, coding and social media. Maybe thinking, girl, like, okay, but follow me here. Follow me here. I learned to code when I was 15 at a Code with Klossy summer program where I learned that I could apply that skill to anything and everything. And on the content side of things, I got bored during the pandemic and loved giving my unsolicited opinion and yelling on the internet. So I got a pretty sizable following on TikTok and joined the organization Gen Z for Change in posting content to mobilize my generation to vote in the 2020 election.

9:12So I knew that with these two powers I held, I could do something. I could make something real in the three or so hours I had. So I got to work. I found an email address where people could send public comments on agenda items and coded a tool where people could just put in their name, affiliation, anything else they wanted to send, and a randomly generated email would be created. All they had to do was push send. I finished it like 15 minutes before the deadline. It was one of the ugliest websites I had ever made. I posted it to Instagram, Twitter, TikTok. I had around 150 ,000 followers at the time.

9:52I sent it to my family. My sister sent it to her friends, who sent it to their friends. And then I held my breath. A few hours later, the water board voted 9 to 3 to approve the memorial. And I felt at ease. It wasn't until a few months later, though, that I learned that out of the 63 comments submitted, 56, the vast majority, were sent using the tool that I had coded.

10:23Which is so insane because there was so little time people were able to use it in the first place. This success was a testament to the fact that so often people want to speak out. They want to do something, but don't know how or get discouraged in the face of bureaucracy. Making it a little bit easier for folks needs to be a core value for all of us. In another instance, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin created a tip line to report critical race theory being taught in schools. I had a problem with that. So I wanted there to be an easy, fun, community-oriented way to get this tip line taken down as soon as possible.

11:02So I coded a tool that allowed people to send song lyrics and lines from the B-movie to the tip line. Essentially, it takes the name of a real school, a real city in Virginia, and spits out a very ridiculous report. For example, I have reason to believe Thomas Jefferson High School is teaching race. I overheard a teacher saying, shoddy had them apple-bottom jeans. Yeah. It's silly. It's goofy. It's just as unserious as the creation of a teacher reporting tip line itself, which is exactly what draws people to this kind of action. Democracy is just more fun and inviting when you take it into your own hands.

11:45After I finished the website, I sent it to my friends at Gen Z for Change. We all posted videos. Thousands of emails were sent from every state in the country and virtually every continent. And we had emails bouncing within 48 hours. Months later, the tip line was quietly officially shut down. Didn't even last a year. Because of the skills of a few, the platforms of many, and the will of hundreds of thousands of meddling kids unified in our intolerance of injustice, we were far more powerful than a couple people in official positions of power. Now, I'm not asking y 'all to drop everything and learn how to code, even though I definitely think you should.

12:30Coding is part of my power, right? But power manifests differently to different people. If you have a pen, write something. If you have an instrument, play something. If you have the anger of a thousand sons and disposable income, open your purse. And if you have social media and a smartphone, I know that y 'all do, so don't try me, tell a story and let it spread like wildfire. And while it's true that a subset of people use their skills for hateful, nefarious, less-than-democratic purposes, the sheer existence of this subset requires that we think of more innovative and creative ways to ensure that the voices of the masses are genuinely heard and accounted for.

13:17Now, every time I'm home and I walk by Central Park and see the new signage, I'm reminded of the power our anguish, our joy, our stories, and our unity holds. We were able to change my community forever and for the better, all by causing a ruckus on the internet. The stability of democracy internationally requires that we use whatever skills and resources we have to combat hate, bring movements to life, and stand united in solidarity with one another on every corner of the globe. Justice can't wait. So take what's in front of you, get really creative, and cause a ruckus.

14:13Sofia Ongele: TED Tech is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced by Nina Lawrence, edited by Alejandra Salazar and fact check by Julia Dickerson. Special thanks to Maria Latias, Fer Degrange, Corey Hajim, Daniela Valarreso, and Michelle Quint. I'm Sherelle Dorsey. Thanks for listening and talk to you again next week.

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