Genevieve Shea | How Poland and Hungary are rebuilding their democracy

[00:00] Genevieve: I often represent the US government on international election observation missions with Poland. It completely bucked my expectations. When we were going into the election in 2023, it was shortly after Russia had started the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This moment of fear and anxiety might actually just sort of favor the incumbent government who kind of presented themselves as like the strongman. The trend that I saw was completely different than that. What I think was really incredible is that instead of people organizing around this anxiety and fear of a foreign entity. Instead, they really organized around hope and future building.

[00:39] Beatrice: I'm very happy to be joined today by Genevieve Shea at the Existential Hope Podcast. So thank you so much for joining, Genevieve.

[00:46] Genevieve: Thank you for having me.

[00:47] Beatrice: So I'm really excited to have you on this episode. It's a bit of a different theme for us. We've never had an episode on this topic. It's basically on the topic of democracy because I know you've worked on this for a really long time and you have a lot of experience. And so maybe we just kind of start there. I know you spent over a decade working on sort of democracy preservation work. What pulled you into this work?

[01:12] Genevieve: Sure. So, you know, when I was 18 years old, I moved to Paris with no other motivation than to, you know, drink wine and eat baguette. But as a young person interested in politics, studying in Europe, but as an American myself, it was really important for me to figure out what are the meaningful spaces that I can contribute and where does it make sense for an American to weigh in. And at the time all of the advice I received was the only place that makes sense for you is to focus on sort of transatlantic security and these hard policy questions around arms negotiation and traditional security issues. And so that's exactly what I did. My master's degree was in Russian politics. I was very focused on that area of the world.

[01:53] Genevieve: But it was a different time. I, you know, there's this meme going around about sort of Obama-era millennial optimism. I totally embodied that in that my understanding of sort of the world order at the time is that we were ushering in this moment of peace and prosperity, and all of the work that I would be doing would be sort of focused on de-escalating previous arms. So in 2012, Hungary changed its constitution for the first time, and it really was this alarm bell of attacks on values that I had understood to be totally entrenched. My whole understanding of Europe and the United States is that we had this sort of common understanding of what the next century would look like, how we were moving forward, how we were progressing. And that 2012 change really just shook my understanding. So, you know, we'll talk in more details, but some of the things that came under attack were rule of law, the courts, media, and it all happened sort of quickly and rapidly and caught a lot of people off guard.

[02:46] Genevieve: And so taking my sort of understanding of prosperity and optimism and forward-looking, I really felt it was my responsibility to go to Hungary and fix it. And so I left my degree in Russian politics. I went and got a second master's degree in Budapest and I focused explicitly on sort of the European project. What did it mean for these countries to join NATO and the EU? What did that mean for their democracy? And I think I showed up in Hungary with the idea that this would be sort of a two-year project, that I had the ambition and the naivety of a young person to think that just with my contribution we would fix this and we'd be back to sort of the progress and potential that we had seen in that early sort of 2010 moment in time. What I didn't know then was that this would become, you know, for me personally a 12-year project focused on Hungary, but also working on democracy issues globally.

[03:34] Beatrice: Yeah, and I think we will definitely dive into the Hungary example a bit more specifically. I'm a bit curious to hear though, like, I mean, you touched on it, but when you started out, kind of like, what was something that you believed about democracy and what do you believe now? Like, have you changed your mind about anything?

[03:55] Genevieve: Completely. So I mean, still to this day, when I explain the work that I do or that I have done, I often do default to explanations around work I've done on elections, which is vast, but it is only a small portion of the full portfolio of work I do. And I think that sort of clearly defines, you know, what a lot of people understand about democracy, that it's something that you participate in maybe once every few years, two years, four years, you show up, you participate, you express your opinion via a vote, and then you kinda hand things over and let other people take the lead.

[04:25] Genevieve: My experience and understanding of democracy is totally different now. I really think of it as a practice, it's something that needs to be exercised and maybe exercised daily. And that looks a lot of different ways. So some of the things I look at when I look at democratic character is not do they hold free and fair elections, but instead do they have meaningful ways for lawmakers and citizens to engage throughout the cycle? And that can look a lot of different ways. Are there meaningful avenues for citizens to express their opinion via organizing or protest? Do lawmakers themselves create opportunities to receive feedback, whether through town halls or more formal forms of participation like citizens' assemblies? And when you look at the performance of those lawmakers, do they take their sort of oath seriously? Do they perform in service of the goodwill?

[05:10] Beatrice: There's a lot of different tools and practices that need to be in place, basically, it sounds like, for democracy to function. Yeah. This is something that I've heard at least. A lot of sort of terrifying facts that democracy is declining in the world and these sort of things. Is that the case? Like, over the past 20 years, what has actually happened to democracy around the world?

[05:30] Genevieve: Sure. I think 2025 in particular was a stark realization for a lot of people in that 2025 marked the twentieth consecutive year that democracy has been in decline as measured by Freedom House. So if you look at where we're at right now, there are more countries that are living or have authoritarian rule than there are that are considered totally free, open democracies, and more are in decline than are moving forward. So last year, 54 countries that were measured by Freedom House were in a sort of backwards or downwards trajectory, and only 35 were making improvements in their democracy.

[06:02] Genevieve: I think one other statistic that maybe highlights the sort of severity of this, those put forward in the most recent V-Dem report, their measure in 2025 was that 74% of the global population was living under some sort of authoritarian rule. If you compare that to 2005, only 50% of the population was living under an autocracy. And I think that statistic might surprise some listeners to this audience. If you look at the last 20 years, I don't think most of our experience, with the exception of a few countries, is seeing these like dramatic authoritarian takeovers. There haven't been too many military coups, there haven't been a lot of violent repression. There are certainly examples. But what we've seen is a real sort of gradual decline in progress. And we can talk more about what that looks like.

[06:47] Beatrice: Yeah, I'd be curious if you could just explain a bit, like, when researchers are sort of measuring democracy declining, what is it that they're actually sort of counting or looking at?

[06:59] Genevieve: Sure. It might be helpful just to cite a few resources that I think are valuable if people are interested in these measures. My North Star is really done by Freedom House. They produce really comprehensive reports that are easy to digest. If you want, like, a full narrative of a country's trajectory, I really recommend the work that they do. If you are a total data nerd and want to be able to play with data sets and really dig into the details, then V-Dem is the sort of golden resource on these things. But in terms of what they are looking at, it certainly has changed.

[07:29] Genevieve: So something I, to this day, still participate in is I often represent the US government on international election observation missions. And the things that we do are show up in a country, deploy all over the country and take a look at what's happening on election day. And increasingly we find, you know what, these elections look pretty good. You know, I was here all day. I didn't see a single poll worker stuffing a bunch of ballots in a box. I didn't see the candidate outside of the polling station handing people $10 bills, telling them to vote for them. I didn't see, you know, I even saw posters for the opposition, and yet we are measuring this country as autocratic, and so what's the deal? It turns out that most countries today actually do hold some form of elections, no matter what their democracy is. And so instead we kind of need to look at everything else. So what does the information environment look like leading up to that election?

[08:18] Genevieve: Just because there's opposition on the ballot, were they able to like meaningfully compete? Did they have access to the same resources that the other political parties had? That can be in airtime, that can be financial. Is everyone playing by the same rules? A lot of times we see that a country has really robust political party financing legislation, but the governing party isn't really upheld to those standards. No one's auditing them and making sure that they followed their own guidelines that they legislated and put in place. So a lot of, I think, the measure at this point is taking the procedural information. A lot of countries look pretty good on paper. And does the practice and the quality of that work really match?

[08:54] Genevieve: We see that play out in institutions as well. So for example, one of the big trends when we see a country decline in democracy is sort of a change in the quality or the performance of these institutions. The courts are often one of the things that comes under attack first, because they are the most effective branch at holding an executive power accountable. And so while many countries may still have a functioning Supreme Court, what does it really look like? Have they purged all the judges that maybe were known to exercise independent decisions and replaced them with loyalists? Have they dismissed folks that the rulings were unpopular? Do they take seriously electoral complaints if citizens raise it or if people try and use those courts as an effective mechanism? Are those complaints addressed? And so those are the things that we need to measure now, is not the existence of institutions, but what is the real quality of their performance?

[09:45] Beatrice: And when a democracy starts to erode, is that something that even a normal person in the country will notice, or does it usually come more, you know, it sneaks up on you, you don't really even notice, or, yeah, what's your take?

[09:59] Genevieve: Yeah. I mean, I think that is the change that we've seen in the last 20 years as we moved from, you know, political change being something kind of violent or extreme into something that is like a slow erosion. I think there are telling signs that people do start to notice. It may be that politics become more hostile, that opposition are often described as enemies of the state or guilty of treason. Those are sort of language cues that we see that I think people are aware of.

[10:24] Genevieve: The unfortunate side effect of that though is that a lot of people really tune out at that point. That creates a lot of sort of disinterest in the system. They don't see it as a place that they can participate. And so right at the moment that we need people to probably engage, we're actually seeing a sort of apathy take hold as a result of these first signs. That being said, I do think if you're watching closely, there is sort of a playbook that we continuously see that was sort of articulated and piloted in the last year and it is pretty effective now.

[10:52] Genevieve: And so a few of the telltale signs that we measure sort of first and immediately is often, I mentioned, the quality of the courts. So a really common practice is seeing judges dismissed. Maybe they put in forced retirement ages or they find other reasons to sort of change the size of the bench and replace with loyalists. A similar practice is happening across public institutions. So one of the first actions we often see governments who are taking an illiberal turn take is just widespread dismissal of folks, civil servants, folks working in public administration, and replacing them with loyalists. And I think the other category of work that we see come under attack first is often the media. So making sure that independent media really struggles to survive, maybe cutting off their resources or in some cases even sort of seizing those independent productions and making them state-held resources.

[11:43] Beatrice: Yeah. So I mean, this is the broader trend. And the reason that I wanted to have you on this podcast is because you've also seen cases where you've been able to reverse this negative trend. And so, yeah, I know we met at a conference and you were talking about some cases that you recently saw where democracy has, how do you say, inclined, things have gotten better. So I think it's important to uplift these examples also and have a look at them and see what we can do to help do this to the broader trend. So maybe we start there. Like, which cases are the ones that you've seen as reversals?

[12:21] Genevieve: Yeah, so it's definitely not all bad news by any means. I think if you look at that same 20-year report from last year, one of the good news pieces is that 85% of the countries who were considered totally free, the strongest democracies, they remained that way. So most of the decline is happening in these sort of newer, more vulnerable democracies that are going from a partly free state back to a closed position.

[12:45] Genevieve: I also think if you look globally, there's some really remarkable moments of democratic resilience where all of the pressure is there to sort of turn the other way and countries are resisting. A few examples that come to mind are maybe South Korea at the end of 2024, the president instated martial law. And very swiftly, quickly, the parliament, including members of that president's own party, unanimously overturned that. They said, no way, that's not how we're moving this country forward. I think Ukraine is another example of just incredible resilience given the situation in that country and all the pressure that they face in this moment.

[13:19] Genevieve: Something I found really remarkable last year is the sort of, you know, breakout of large public protests when the government enacted some legislation that they could defend as a sort of easing procedure in this time of extreme pressure, but citizens realized that it left some vulnerabilities to corruption. That's something that they take very seriously in the country and want to see their country progress on. And so even in a time where there's a lot of latitude for more direct government from parliament, you know, citizens came out in protest. They have a lot of anxieties and concerns and they still said, nope, accountability in government is really important to us and we're gonna protest and make sure that you uphold those values.

[13:57] Genevieve: I think Ukraine as well, you see some really incredible work happening at the local level where maybe they have a little bit more latitude and space to breathe. And so they're saying, you know what, let's not abandon our democratic progress or that agenda. Let's actually push things forward. And you see cities introducing things like formal citizens' assemblies where citizens are invited to weigh into legislation and make decisions about policy that are upheld by that government. And those are pretty advanced forms of deliberation and participation. And they're choosing to advance those in this moment, despite all of the other distractions. So I think that's really remarkable.

[14:29] Genevieve: And then I think we have moments of democratic renewal. And so I don't know that we're out of the woods on a lot of these situations, but the two countries that I know best, Poland and Hungary, where I've dedicated most of my career, are both countries that have made really remarkable advances in the last few years. Both of those are ushered in by an electoral victory by the opposition, and we can talk about the sort of conditions that made that happen. But Poland had their electoral victory in 2023. And since then V-Dem has described the country as literally on a U-turn. So the path that was happening and the decline that was happening has done a complete reversal and is heading in the other direction.

[15:04] Genevieve: Again, we're not out of the woods, but I think there's a real shift in character in the way that that country is being governed. And I think Hungary as well. We saw the end of a 16-year government period under Fidesz and Viktor Orbán. And what I think is remarkable in both Hungary and Poland is not that they've fixed every problem, but what we can see and measure is that there is a genuine, widespread public commitment, not just in government, but sort of countrywide, that we are righting the course, we are recommitting to democratic practice. And these are the expectations that we have for our government going forward.

[15:38] Beatrice: Yeah, maybe we can dive into, we can do one at a time, like Hungary and Poland. I think it would be interesting for listeners to learn a bit, like, what was the trajectory that they were on and then what happened to make it swing. I know that you mentioned briefly that, you know, it shifted, like, the opposition was able to win, but if we go into, like, zoom in on that, what actually happened there?

[16:02] Genevieve: Sure. I don't know that it's so interesting to dive into every detail of two governments that are no longer in power. And so maybe I'll focus on the broad trends and then the part that I find really exciting and interesting are, like, the conditions that changed that allowed that period to end. So just in the most brief terms, Poland was governed by the Law and Justice Party for eight years, up until 2023. Hungary had a much longer period of sort of illiberal democracy governed by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the Fidesz political party. They governed this turn for 16 years, and that government just ended this year with elections in March.

[16:37] Genevieve: A few things that were common across speak to some of the elements that I've already spoken to. So both countries, pretty immediately when these governments got in power, they focused their attention on the courts and media as two vulnerabilities that needed to be sort of captured and completely controlled if they were going to advance their agendas. Both also looked at civil society as targets for their work. So both used strategic legislation to hamper the activities of civil society and make sure that civil society who was receiving resources, either via the EU or some of the other funding mechanisms that exist, making sure that those organizations were aligned with the government priorities. That's another way that the government can sort of brag. Like, of course, yes, we have robust civil society. Look at all these organizations who are active, but the reality is it's very selective and the organizations that are being funded that are allowed to operate without harassment or intimidation, they are all aligned with the government, whereas those who are doing anything different find it very hard to operate.

[17:33] Genevieve: I will say that there's a lot of similar practice between Poland and Hungary, and there are also things that distinguish them. One, in Hungary, the government just governed for much longer, and therefore there was more time to advance sort of their agenda and further sort of consolidate power within the government. Poland also has the real advantage of having strong urban centers that always looked a little bit different than how the national government ruled. So it's a much bigger country. There's many more cities. And I think like many countries, the character of cities is a little bit different than maybe the national politics.

[18:03] Genevieve: And so while we see sort of widespread repression on things like LGBT rights, there were always sort of safe spaces to operate in Poland, whether you came to Warsaw and were working directly with the mayor, you had these sort of democratic strongholds fighting the entire time. And that's pretty remarkable. And I think contributed to why they were able to break with that autocratic tendency a little bit quicker than maybe Hungary was. Hungary doesn't benefit from that dynamic. Budapest is the capital city. Again, it functions a little bit differently than the rest of the country. But outside of Budapest, there are not many other urban strongholds. There are not other large cities.

[18:40] Genevieve: Maybe just to speak a little bit about the work that I actually did in those countries and looking at that landscape, what we thought were going to be meaningful contributions. I think everything that we did was about demonstrating a different version of politics and letting people know, you know, it doesn't have to be this way. And there actually are alternative ways to be governed, to participate in society, to have your leaders reflect your interests. And so a few priorities of ours were, number one, training young people and women to run for office, as well as sort of minority and other groups, making sure that they felt empowered to participate in politics. For us, that was very much about creating sort of a new face of political participation that everyone should feel like their interests could be represented.

[19:21] Genevieve: We also felt like having new generations of leaders were important who really were committed to a different vision of what they wanted their future to hold. We were working with a lot of young people who were born after the fall of communism. Their experience of Europe and what it meant to live in a democracy was entirely different than sort of the generations prior. And so working with these young people and helping them articulate their sort of new version of a democratic future was really important to us.

[19:46] Genevieve: The second thing that we did was work with elected leaders in city and municipal offices. Again, it was about demonstrating a different type of politics. So I already mentioned that urban centers often remained sort of democratic islands in these countries. But there's a few ways that they did that effectively. So I think one really strong example is in 2025, when the Hungarian government outlawed the Pride Festival in Hungary, the Budapest government came forward and said, we don't care if this is illegal. We're sponsoring this event. We are working with the police who are under our mandate. We are closing the streets and we are making sure that this happens. And so they often worked in direct opposition to the national government. There were voices that stood up and said, no, this is not right. And these are the sort of human rights obligations that we think we have and how we should govern.

[20:33] Genevieve: I think the other wonderful thing about cities is, no matter what side of the aisle those cities were governed by, mayors have a real obligation to just fix problems. Like, if things are not functioning in their cities, they are going to hear from their constituents. And so even mayors and other governments who were not aligned with the opposition, maybe they were members of the governing party, they weren't often willing to work with us because they saw that what we were offering were real solutions. And again, they were able to demonstrate a politics that just looks a little different. It wasn't always self-serving. It was maybe less corrupt because they knew if they weren't looking at service delivery and actually providing for their citizens, they were going to hear about it and they were more likely to maybe lose their seats.

[21:12] Genevieve: And then the third group we looked at was civil society. And very specifically when we were working with civil society, it was about creating more public demand for a different type of politics and change. So we quickly realized that just providing advocacy groups training on communications or organizing wasn't going to be that effective. They could be the most effective communicators for their cause you've ever seen. It doesn't mean it was gonna like move the needle in an entirely closed society.

[21:37] Genevieve: And so what we really focused on was relationship building and coalition building among these actors with the idea that we really need to create, like, broad public demand, make collective action sort of unignorable, and really expand the space of citizens who are aware, engaged, and mobilized. And that meant creating lots of different entry points. So thinking about all sorts of policy issues from, you know, clean water and transportation and traffic and things that really get people exercised in their community to human rights things like LGBT rights or women's rights, and working with all those different actors who had pretty disparate interests and finding ways for them to all sort of come together and organize and think about a grand strategy that was much bigger than their individual advocacy priorities.

[22:20] Beatrice: Yeah, I loved what you were saying in the beginning there of, like, a big part of it is just showing people that there's a better way to do things, maybe, and that, you know, showing that there are options. I think that's a big part of what we're trying to do with this existential hope project in general, is just, like, showing that there are smart ways to solve our problems and to tackle them. So I know that one thing that we talked a bit about before also is that, you know, people need to believe that it's possible to change things, that it's, like, worth trying? You mentioned that hope can be a type of civic infrastructure to make this happen. Can you maybe expand on what you mean by that?

[23:01] Genevieve: So I think it might be helpful to highlight a few ways that I saw hope as a real agent of change in these two elections that we were just talking about. So both in Poland and Hungary. Starting with Poland, when we were going into the election in 2023, you have to remember that it was shortly after Russia had started the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And so when we were looking at the politics of that country, really, a lot had been disrupted. Poland saw more than 2 million Ukrainians enter the country kind of overnight.

[23:28] Genevieve: All of the cities now had a lot of financial and political pressure to make sure that people received housing and were accommodated and schools had capacity to take in new school children. There was just a lot of sort of pressure on all of the public institutions in the country. And so for us looking at that, who were interested and saw some growing momentum for democratic progress, we're also aware that this moment of fear and anxiety might actually just sort of favor the incumbent government, who in this national conversation kind of presented themselves as like the strongman, as a, you know, leader of national identity, who maybe were the sort of force that you would want behind you in a moment of war.

[24:07] Genevieve: And what was really remarkable is the trend that I saw was completely different than that. It completely bucked my expectations of what the election would look like. I think what I learned being in Poland at that time is that the anxiety that people were experiencing had very little to do with the idea that like Russia was suddenly going to cross the border and everyone would be at war and that would be the reality. Instead, the anxiety that people were experiencing was just the amount of money and resources and attention that had to go to defending the country and making sure that future didn't happen. And the stark reality that people were facing is that the more resources that we put to those aims means the less resources that we have for our cultural activities or our own educational pursuits or programs that allowed us to study and travel abroad. So people's vision of how they imagined a sort of future modern Poland was shrinking at that time.

[24:59] Genevieve: And so what I think was really incredible is that instead of people organizing around this anxiety and fear of a foreign entity. Instead, they really organized around hope and future building. And so widespread what we saw was communities articulating, these are our priorities. They exist alongside the need to defend our country. And instead we want to make sure that X, Y, and Z are also part of our future, part of the future that we have for our kids. And so that created, I think, a real mobilizing base for civil society to get involved to say, you know, in our lane of women's rights, here's what we want to see achieved, in our lane of education, here's the future that we want to build. And all of them became real agents of getting people out to vote and participate in that election and really encouraging people to vote for a future-leaning posture instead of a really defensive sort of backward-leaning position.

[25:49] Genevieve: I think hope was also sort of really critical in the most recent Hungarian elections as well. You know, the government in Hungary had really relied on a sense of sort of nationalism and fear to maintain their authority in the country for a long time. And so I don't know that any of us anticipated that this election would have necessarily been the moment where hope became an organizing principle. I think what worked so well is that hope really became an organizing position to counteract that feeling of like apathy and disengagement that I had previously discussed.

[26:24] Genevieve: So I think what had happened in Hungary was not so much that people were so excited about the government. I think they saw their economic conditions were worsening. They saw a lot of problems with how the government was functioning, but they didn't really see a credible alternative. You know, the opposition had been so repressed that they didn't really see that as a way forward. And it took someone coming forward and saying, like, nope, we can do this, we can build to finally usher in change.

[26:47] Genevieve: So there was a new political leader that emerged. His name is Péter Magyar. He was sort of the new face of the opposition, but really came forward with sort of like a motivating change platform. So I think what was wonderful is that allowed a lot of civil society to get on board with his political party and his campaign and say, hey, we may not agree with this man on everything, but what we do agree on is the idea that we are going to reintroduce democracy to Hungary, that we are going to create avenues for participation. And why that's really important is that all of us can come together collectively and agree that with a more democratic future, we all have a chance to then advocate for our own priorities and advance these other goals that we have. And so again, I see hope there as, you know, fear kind of turned people off from the political process. Hope was the thing that allowed them to sort of collectively engage and move forward with the vision.

[27:41] Beatrice: Yeah, I think this is a saying from Ada Palmer, she's a sci-fi author who we also had on the podcast. She always says that sort of despair is how we lose. And I think that that's the case, like, in terms of if you feel too much despair and apathy, you're not gonna do anything. If you have hope that you can change something, you will take action, you will do the work necessary to make it happen. And so that's why it's an important element. Of course, not just having hope isn't gonna solve it, you also have to do the work. I know that you personally now also move more towards governance work and AI risk. Was there like a clear bridge or connection between your previous work and this?

[28:19] Genevieve: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've always seen my responsibility is to sort of like hand-hold lawmakers, civil society actors, other people in the political process through whatever the sort of major shock or change is of the moment. And so I've had the fortunate pleasure of working directly with parliaments as they were navigating the COVID-19 pandemic or being based in Poland at the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and working with lawmakers there. And so looking at societal shock and the things that kind of potentially rock our systems has always been sort of at the forefront of my mind. Of course as well, looking at democracy in the last 20 years, we can't ignore the fact that technology, social media, other influences have had a major influence. And so I've always been cognizant of the relationship between those two.

[29:03] Genevieve: What attracts me to AI and why I've sort of committed myself full-time to working on AI safety and particularly its impacts on democracy is that its impacts are so widespread. They're, you know, if we talk about everything from governance to artistic endeavors to workforce displacement, every sort of element of society has the potential to be touched by this issue. And therefore I think it deserves sort of a collective response. If ever there was a time for democracy to function, it is now, both not just in a way that we regulate and create policy, but democracy, you know, as that practice, as a form of ways for both participants and lawmakers to reflect their interests and move forward and create a vision and hopeful message of what we want the future to look like.

[29:47] Beatrice: Yeah, is there something from your work in the democracy world that you think people working in AI should be borrowing or using more?

[29:57] Genevieve: I think if you look at people working on AI safety in particular, they have underinvested in this idea of sort of collective action and grassroots organizing. I think that there are really wonderful policy solutions being put forward by credible, important actors. That is important. Lawmakers need to know what their options are and hear from expert sources. But what we haven't done is really create the public demand for change. Another thing I see is that public demand is maybe growing and coalescing. But we need a little bit more attention to supporting those actors and figuring out what to do with that energy. So for example, here in the United States, something we're seeing at the moment is a lot of backlash against data centers. You see people sort of protesting or showing up at town halls and saying that they don't want these data centers present. What I don't think, and what we know sort of from evidence, is just stopping data center construction is not going to stop all AI harms. And so what I think we need to do is work with those communities who are showing up and protesting.

[30:52] Genevieve: And helping them understand that because they've all come together with this idea that they want something different from their future, helping them articulate that sort of hope-based vision, because they themselves now have the power to be sort of a collective bargaining unit, right? Like, they are being effective and they are doing their job at stopping the construction of these data centers. Now it's sort of time that they articulate what they want. So if a data center is going to be constructed in your state or your community, I think that's a really good opportunity to harness that energy and start creating some demand as well.

[31:23] Genevieve: So maybe it is that you need new schools in your district and expect an investment into new schools or public infrastructure. Again, I think if we can really support those actors to think through the relationship between the power that they hold and the power of industry and other actors, we have a lot more power than we think and we just need to harness it.

[31:44] Beatrice: Yeah, it's very difficult to harness that type of constructive power and to articulate what we want. I know I try to do it all the time here, but it's still difficult. Okay, so for someone young listening to this and they want to work on this, what would you recommend they do? Like, where do they start?

[32:05] Genevieve: Sure. I mean, all politics is local. The threshold of participation I think is much lower than people realize. And it's incredible that some of the most effective organizing we're seeing at the moment, for example, around data centers, is happening because they've taken this issue to their local town councils. So I don't think you should see distance from a capital city or your age as a necessary barrier, there are ways to participate in politics. And as we've sort of stated, it's a daily practice. And so, you know, there's really nothing stopping you from getting involved, certainly as an activist.

[32:35] Genevieve: I think one of my interests as well is sort of lowering the threshold for participation in AI safety. And so when I look at the landscape of what is missing for credible advocacy in this area, I do think that we are missing a lot of evidence of how these systems are really performing, particularly in smaller language democracies.

[32:53] Genevieve: And so for folks around the world, if you're a young person, one of the things that I think is really interesting and needed and a place for more people to get involved is looking at evaluations. I think the threshold to organize evaluations is much lower than people think. And so that's another activity that I would love to see university students and other groups organize around and really capture evidence of how AI is performing in their local languages, what information is it providing about elections, other political processes? And I think that could be a great starting point for young people as well.

[33:26] Beatrice: Yeah, I think that even there's the Collective Intelligence Project, has, like, evals that you can set up in your own, like, you can just kind of run them and it's very useful for, yeah, you can gather really useful knowledge, and they have a great network where actually if you do evals it could actually inform the AI companies building the AIs. So yeah, encourage that. Is there like a book or a person or an organization that you think more people should really know about?

[33:53] Genevieve: Yeah, I think because we've been talking about sort of hope as an organizing principle, I'd love to call out the work of Unhack Democracy. They are a pan-European organization who first put this idea into my mind through their REWIRE Incubator. They actually look at the sort of combination of neuroscience and organizing principles and together bring those ideas under the umbrella of hope. And so beyond what I've shared today, I think if you are interested in this concept, they're a really great organization to look at.

[34:20] Beatrice: Nice. I haven't heard of them. We'll check them out. What's your existential hope vision for the future?

[34:26] Genevieve: You know, I've said it over and over again, but I think of democracy as a practice. It's something that should be exercised every single day. And I would love to see sort of digital infrastructure that supports all of that. So for me, that does not necessarily mean more direct democracy. I don't think people should be voting on every single issue that comes to pass. But there should be opportunities to provide feedback, to get a collective idea of how your citizenry feel about a certain interest, have sort of public venues for discourse, all of which can exist online. And I think as well, having greater infrastructure to track what lawmakers are doing, how they're legislating, so that we can have greater accountability standards would all be part of my vision of a more collective participatory democratic process.

[35:12] Beatrice: Wonderful. And my last question will be, what's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

[35:17] Genevieve: You know, I hate to borrow from like a commercial slogan, but I really think "just do it" is like a motivating factor for me. I think there is something psychologically really important about just starting, doing the work and not waiting for some sort of, you know, infrastructure, institutional permission to get started. So if you have an idea, you know, just execute and get going and I promise you will find support and backing.

[35:43] Beatrice: Yeah, I love it. That's great advice. Thank you so much, Genevieve.

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