Civic and Democratic AI: A New Course for Community Action

The Trump administration is moving to terminate legal protections for over 500,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, making them potentially subject to mass expulsion overnight. The administration fired the entire staff running the $4.1 billion Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program—which helps 6.2 million Americans pay heating and cooling bills. And the House passed legislation that would cut Medicaid by $600 billion over a decade, stripping coverage from an estimated 10.3 million people through new work requirements and eligibility restrictions.

For the millions affected by these and other policy changes, understanding their rights and knowing their options has become a matter of urgent survival. 

Yet government notices about life-altering changes sometimes arrive in dense bureaucratic language designed more to confuse than inform. Meanwhile, the very agencies meant to help people navigate these systems are being gutted or eliminated entirely.

To help people navigate government processes and strengthen civic and democratic engagement, the GovLab, and its partner project the Burnes Center for Social Change, wants your feedback on our new Civic AI course.

To help people navigate government processes and strengthen civic and democratic engagement, the GovLab, and its partner project the Burnes Center for Social Change, wants your feedback on our new Civic AI course.

Democracy Has a Translation Problem

Simplifying language and processes offers tremendous benefits.

By changing the language in its unemployment insurance application, the State of New Jersey has been able to bring down the time it takes to apply by 80%. Now the State is turning to AI to simplify the letters it sends out, dramatically speeding up the time it takes residents to reply to requests. 

But such streamlining is still the exception. Across America, countless Americans stare at their benefits or immigration or court paperwork dumbfounded by bureaucratic language and processes.

We cannot wait for government institutions to fix this communication crisis—not when Afghan families have until July to understand their legal options and especially when we do not know if there's anyone left to answer the phone, process applications or provide customer service after massive government layoffs.

Meanwhile, generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude are becoming as common as smartphones.

But these powerful technologies come with no instructions for the civic challenges that now determine whether families can stay in the country, keep their health coverage, or heat their homes. Most of us know little about AI let alone how to use these powerful tools for the civic challenges that matter most in our daily lives.

Civic AI Education for Everyone: Enabling Co-Creation

With support from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, we're developing Civic AI: Powerful Tools for Community Action—an 8-part course delivered via WhatsApp in multiple languages. Each video is just 5 minutes long, designed for busy families who want practical skills.

The course teaches two essential capabilities:

Individual Navigation: How to use AI to understand government documents, navigate benefits applications, know your rights, and access services you're entitled to.

Community Organizing: How to research issues, create advocacy materials, plan meetings, write petitions, and amplify your voice in local decision-making.

Participants don't just learn to use existing tools—they gain the knowledge to eventually advocate for AI solutions designed specifically for their communities' needs like the AIEP tool we are building together with Innovate Public Schools and with families of students with disabilities to help them translate, simplify and summarize their child’s Individualized Education Program.

We Need Your Input

Before we finalize this course, we need feedback from people like you:

• Is the content clear and accessible? How can we simplify without losing impact?

• What examples resonate most? Should we focus purely on civic applications or include more engaging general examples?

• Where should we cut for length? Each video must stay under 5 minutes.

• What are we missing? What civic AI applications would be most valuable for your community?

Review our course outline and scripts here and add your comments directly in the document.

Sign up here for more information.

Why This Matters Now

Democracy works best when everyone can participate. But participation requires information, and information today is often overwhelming, inaccessible, or buried in complexity. AI can serve as a bridge between complex systems and individual needs—if people know how to use it responsibly and effectively.

With education, we want to enable:

• Community organizers to be able translate meeting notes into multiple languages, making neighborhood associations truly inclusive

• Senior citizens to be able to navigate complex government websites with AI assistance, accessing benefits they didn't know existed

• Parents to be able to summarize dense policy documents and highlight changes affecting their children

• Environmental activists to be able to analyze industrial permit applications, identifying concerns that might otherwise go unnoticed

AI should not replace human judgment or community relationships. Rather, strategic use of these tools can give each of us the ability to understand our government, access our rights, and organize for change more effectively than ever before.

Imagine a world where:

• Every family can quickly understand how government decisions affect them

• Language is never a barrier to accessing public services

• Community organizing is as simple as having a conversation

• Civic participation increases because the tools of democracy are accessible to everyone

When families have the skills to make AI work for their civic needs, they don't just become better at navigating the system—they become better equipped to change it.