The Protocol Is the Product

The host introduces counter-evidence, paradoxes, and tensions that prevent simple answers. This phase deliberately raises the complexity of the question, ensuring the room can't retreat to platitudes.

Data points, real-world examples, and provocations are layered to add nuance.

The host models thinking out loud. Instead of declaring a position, they demonstrate how to hold multiple perspectives at once — showing participants that intellectual honesty is valued over certainty.

This gives participants permission to think publicly rather than perform expertise.

Participants split into small cross-sector groups of 4-5 people. Each group explores the question from their combined perspectives. The diversity of the room becomes the engine of insight.

Groups are intentionally mixed: a healthcare worker, a technologist, a regulator, a citizen, an educator.

Each group shares their most surprising insight, their key tension, and their sharpest question. The host captures these in real-time, building toward synthesis.

This is where the room begins to see patterns it couldn't see individually.

The host extracts cross-cutting themes, names the tensions that remain unresolved, and highlights unexpected convergences. This is live editorial work — turning dialogue into civic intelligence.

The synthesis becomes the backbone of the Civic Brief published within 48 hours.

The session's output is formalized: key themes, direct quotes, tensions identified, and actionable signals. Within 48 hours, a Civic Insight Brief is published — the public record of what real people said about AI.

This brief feeds directly into the Societal Readiness Index.