Every time a new technology is inserted between people and institutions, it reshapes how trust is formed and sustained. Tech is also pitched as a solution to a lot of the problems that emerge. AI to detect disinformation, verification systems to authenticate the real, etc. But each of these is itself a new thing demanding our trust and comes with its own opacity, incentives, and PR problems. We solve for one layer of doubt by introducing another.

Key Question/s: When technology mediates civic trust, how do we keep it from simply relocating the problem? Where should a civic tech builder actually start? With the tool, the institution, or the relationship the tool is meant to serve?

Previously built the Stone Transparency platform to surface and humanise journalistic research as a way to grow trust, as opposed to introducing AI or other automated processes in the middle. I can run a workshop, where I help fellows to assess whether a proposed intervention genuinely builds trust or just makes the process more complicated (and also how to design for the former).