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Auteurs principaux: De, Soham, Gelauff, Lodewijk, Goel, Ashish, Milli, Smitha, Procaccia, Ariel, Siu, Alice
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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Accès en ligne:https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.04588
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author De, Soham
Gelauff, Lodewijk
Goel, Ashish
Milli, Smitha
Procaccia, Ariel
Siu, Alice
author_facet De, Soham
Gelauff, Lodewijk
Goel, Ashish
Milli, Smitha
Procaccia, Ariel
Siu, Alice
contents A central feature of many deliberative processes, such as citizens' assemblies and deliberative polls, is the opportunity for participants to engage directly with experts. While participants are typically invited to propose questions for expert panels, only a limited number can be selected due to time constraints. This raises the challenge of how to choose a small set of questions that best represent the interests of all participants. We introduce an auditing framework for measuring the level of representation provided by a slate of questions, based on the social choice concept known as justified representation (JR). We present the first algorithms for auditing JR in the general utility setting, with our most efficient algorithm achieving a runtime of $O(mn\log n)$, where $n$ is the number of participants and $m$ is the number of proposed questions. We apply our auditing methods to historical deliberations, comparing the representativeness of (a) the actual questions posed to the expert panel (chosen by a moderator), (b) participants' questions chosen via integer linear programming, (c) summary questions generated by large language models (LLMs). Our results highlight both the promise and current limitations of LLMs in supporting deliberative processes. By integrating our methods into an online deliberation platform that has been used for over hundreds of deliberations across more than 50 countries, we make it easy for practitioners to audit and improve representation in future deliberations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_04588
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Question the Questions: Auditing Representation in Online Deliberative Processes
De, Soham
Gelauff, Lodewijk
Goel, Ashish
Milli, Smitha
Procaccia, Ariel
Siu, Alice
Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Society
A central feature of many deliberative processes, such as citizens' assemblies and deliberative polls, is the opportunity for participants to engage directly with experts. While participants are typically invited to propose questions for expert panels, only a limited number can be selected due to time constraints. This raises the challenge of how to choose a small set of questions that best represent the interests of all participants. We introduce an auditing framework for measuring the level of representation provided by a slate of questions, based on the social choice concept known as justified representation (JR). We present the first algorithms for auditing JR in the general utility setting, with our most efficient algorithm achieving a runtime of $O(mn\log n)$, where $n$ is the number of participants and $m$ is the number of proposed questions. We apply our auditing methods to historical deliberations, comparing the representativeness of (a) the actual questions posed to the expert panel (chosen by a moderator), (b) participants' questions chosen via integer linear programming, (c) summary questions generated by large language models (LLMs). Our results highlight both the promise and current limitations of LLMs in supporting deliberative processes. By integrating our methods into an online deliberation platform that has been used for over hundreds of deliberations across more than 50 countries, we make it easy for practitioners to audit and improve representation in future deliberations.
title Question the Questions: Auditing Representation in Online Deliberative Processes
topic Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.04588