Politics is broken, so the public is fixing it: World’s First Grassroots Citizens' Assembly on AI Launches Amidst Government ‘Regulation Rollback’
The House of the People will convene its second sitting this autumn, asking an accurate cross-section of the public to decide how artificial intelligence should be governed in the UK — a question Parliament has so far left to the companies building it.
The initiative marks the Second Sitting of the UK’s first permanent, grassroots-led national citizens’ assembly. It follows the success of its inaugural sitting, which produced ‘The People’s Charter’ – a set of 36 fully costed, evidence-backed policy recommendations covering housing, economic inequality, climate breakdown and unjust war – and demonstrated that representative assemblies can deliver viable national legislation with large levels of consensus.
Selected by the Sortition Foundation to precisely mirror the UK population by age, gender, ethnicity, region, socio-economic background and initial attitudes toward technology, the assembly arrives as AI expands rapidly across public services and workplaces without direct democratic oversight.
AI now scores over 1,000 people in the British justice system before a trial begins, while facial recognition technology scanned nearly 10 million faces last year, resulting in an arrest every 90 minutes. One in three employers now uses it to track staff logins, keystrokes, and idle time to rank employees and 25% of UK teenagers are turning to AI chatbots for mental health support.
"Our future shouldn’t be decided behind closed doors by tech CEOs or ministers without public consent” said Molly May Shelton, co-lead of the sitting. “The House of the People has already proven that when everyday people are given the evidence and the space to deliberate, they can point the right way forward on the big questions facing us today.
Partnering with researchers from the Odyssean Institute (Oxford & Cambridge and MIT), members of the House will engage with the findings of the 'Odyssean Process' — the result of AI risk scientists deliberating earlier from February to June. Across a 40-hour program of listening and learning, citizens will use predictive modelling tools to stress-test policy recommendations against hundreds of future scenarios.
The launch comes as ministers face mounting criticism for bypassing statutory public consultations on certain AI infrastructure in July. To fill the democratic gap in places where hyperscale data centres are being developed, the House of the People will hear the views of local people at popular assemblies across the UK, arranged by Assemble, a community organising project that provides tools and training to support local people to hold open meetings in their cities and towns.
The final deliberations will take place from 27-29th November at the People’s History Museum in Manchester, recently described by PM Andy Burnham as “one of my favourite places on earth”. A final policy report will be delivered directly to every Member of Parliament, with grassroots advocacy groups – including Pull the Plug – pledging national campaign actions to implement the assembly’s mandate.
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