We have probably all sat through a meeting where one person dominated the conversation and, to make matters worse, talked about something completely unrelated to the agenda. While all the energy slowly drained out of the room.
What if the solution to that problem is not better meeting facilitators – but better AI?
That is what Elias Gilling Borgmann is currently exploring, and there are indications that the AI may be capable of something humans are not.
“We are prototyping a tool right now where the AI basically acts as a conversation facilitator or mediator. So rather than having your boss, your manager, or your local political representatives facilitating a dialogue between you, you can, as a group of equals, come together and have your conversation mediated by AI technology,” says Elias Gilling Borgmann, who is a postdoctoral researcher at Roskilde University and a new researcher in the ADD project.
He sees significant potential for AI to strengthen democracy, and gives an example:
“I think we’ve all been at a company seminar where we were asked to form groups and build Lego and say how that represented the future strategy of the company. But imagine we didn’t have to go and build Lego sets and give our minor input that way, but that we could actually form meaningful groups, have meaningful conversations, and that the results of all of these conversations could then be aggregated across groups.”
“Your input as one employee or as one citizen would still be just one out of many, but it opens up a whole new way of representing your viewpoint.”
Elias Gilling Borgmann is building an AI that, in a way, is taking his own job:
“If I wasn’t doing research I would probably be some kind of organisational psychologist. And you could pay people like me a lot of money per hour to come and facilitate that kind of debate. But if you have more than just one group then you need more than one facilitator. So in terms of scaling, it’s a huge upside, I would say.”
In addition, some studies suggest people prefer an AI meeting facilitator because people perceive it as having fewer preconceived opinions or biases, says Elias Gilling Borgmann.
But is there not also a risk that the AI will reflect the priorities of the company’s management or a large tech company rather than the ordinary employees?
“First off, there’s nothing in our tool that promises that it will escape from the current condition of some people having more power in organisations than others. But the way we currently do meetings or involve employees you have completely the same problem,” says Elias Gilling Borgmann.
“When your manager asks you a question, you obviously also assess the situation from the point of view that this is your manager asking you, not some random third party or a colleague. So of course you read an aspect of power into that relation. That’s not going away, but I don’t think it gets worse either in a solution like ours.”
Elias Gilling Borgmann has an idealistic bent. He says he grew up “swimming in democratic waters”, influenced by his union leader grandfather, and in his 2025 PhD dissertation he concludes with a “metamodern manifesto for alternative organisations” featuring calls such as “Seize the ideas of production” and “Pursue the ideal but face the real”.
Do you believe that researchers such as yourself have a responsibility to go out into the real world and create change?
“I have a lot of thoughts on that. I think we as academics need to find ways of dealing with our own cynicism. I think we hide away in our ivory towers a lot and treat our problems in isolation and primarily communicate about them to our peers and perhaps not to the public,” he says.
“And I think that makes a lot of sense for career reasons. But if we want the knowledge we create to make a difference, I think we also need to find ways of engaging with other stakeholders, engaging with the public, getting our knowledge out there in a way that might not be as precise as we can do in a scholarly journal, or allow for the level of detail and critique that we would normally hope for. But that’s what we have to do if we want the knowledge we create to make a difference.”
Elias Gilling Borgmann is currently looking for organisations willing to test his AI meeting facilitator. If you are interested, you can contact him here.
Elias Gilling Borgmann, MSc in Psychology, PhD – CV
- Postdoctoral researcher at Roskilde University, where he investigates how AI technology can be used to support democratic participation and public debate.
- Previously researched cynicism and collective leadership in democratic organisations at Copenhagen Business School.
- When he’s not conducting research, he enjoys hunting for treasures at flea markets or foraging in nature.