S3 E1 Engaging Civil Society with the AI Collective

 Historically, we've relied on government and the public sector to regulate the development of society-altering technologies, radio, telephone, automobiles, air travel, broadcast, internet have all come under the slow but steady oversight of the public sector. Even social media is being scrutinized and regions like Australia are beginning to legislate age limits for access.

Artificial intelligence is a different animal and it's moving at an exponential rate of development. It also promises radical social and cultural change from eliminating entire workforces; to shifting global power centers; consolidating wealth; and creating scientific fiction inspiring potentials. AI promises tectonic shifts in healthcare, human thriving, science, energy, economic output, social equity, and more. How can we navigate a future with such wide ranging potentials? Is government able to regulate at this pace of change? Should we, what about in regions like the US where all regulation of AI is being intentionally sidestepped? Is legislation even the right construct for dealing with the future of AI?

Enter the AI collective, a global gathering of civil society, including individuals, researchers, investors, and operators. The AI Collective is a fast growing, nonprofit, grassroots community still in its early days, but already 200,000 members strong with more than 300 organizers and operating on every continent except Antarctica. And that's just as of this recording date. They boast a relationship with almost every major AI and tech organization you can think of.

Today we're gonna talk to two of the founding leadership team from the AI Collective, AJ Green, Founding Director of Growth, and Catherine McMillan, Founding Director.

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Guest Information

The AI Collective Website | LinkedIn

Catherine McMillan, Founding Director | LinkedIn

AJ Green, Founding Director (Growth) | LinkedIn

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On this episode of The 311 Podcast, Paul, Catherine, and AJ chat about:

• Welcome to Season 3
• Introduction to the AI Collective
• AJ Green's Journey to the AI Collective
• Catherine McMillan's Path to the AI Collective
• Diverse Team and High Agency
• Corporate Partnerships and Community Trust
• Manis Event: A Case of Perfect Timing
• The Role of AI Collective
• Moonshots & the Secret Sauce Ahead
•  Final Thoughts from Paul

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Bonus Resources for Stuff We Talked About:

• Edelman Trust Barometer

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Recorded in January 2026

This is a show about the people that make digital public service work. If you'd like to find out more, visit the311podcast.com

We're going to keep having conversations like this. If you've got ideas of guests we should speak to, send us an email to  info@the311podcast.com  

Transcript

Welcome to Season 3

Paul Bellows 0:30

This is the 311 podcast. I'm your host, Paul Bellows. This is a show about the people that make digital work for the public service. If you'd like to find out more, visit the311podcast.com. Welcome to season three of the 3 1 1 Podcast. This season we're gonna be focused on artificial intelligence and how it impacts the way government works and what could be possible if we get it right. Or wrong. Historically, we've relied on government and the public sector to regulate the development of society-altering technologies, radio, telephone, automobiles, air travel, broadcast, internet have all come under the slow but steady oversight of the public sector. Even social media is being scrutinized and regions like Australia are beginning to legislate age limits for access. Artificial intelligence is a different animal and it's moving at an exponential rate of development. It also promises radical social and cultural change from eliminating entire workforces; to shifting global power centers; consolidating wealth; and creating scientific fiction inspiring potentials. AI promises tectonic shifts in healthcare, human thriving, science, energy, economic output, social equity, and more. How can we navigate a future with such wide ranging potentials? Is government able to regulate at this pace of change? Should we, what about in regions like the US where all regulation of AI is being intentionally sidestepped? Is legislation even the right construct for dealing with the future of AI? Enter the AI collective, a global gathering of civil society, including individuals, researchers, investors, and operators. The AI Collective is a fast growing, nonprofit, grassroots community still in its early days, but already 200,000 members strong with more than 300 organizers and operating on every continent except Antarctica. And that's just as of this recording date. They boast a relationship with almost every major AI and tech organization you can think of. Today we're gonna talk to two of the founding leadership team from the AI Collective, AJ Green, Founding Director of Growth, and Catherine McMillan, Founding Director. Here's my conversation with AJ and Catherine. I'm really excited to be here with both of you today. So we've had a chance to meet over the last few days. I was new to the AI Collective and I was new to the two of you. We didn't know each other before a couple of days ago, but I have been absolutely blown away at the astronomical growth. And the impact so far of the AI Collective. And so AJ and Catherine, welcome to the 3 1 1 podcast. And I'm wondering, before I get each of you to introduce yourselves, does one of the two of you, or together, do you wanna take a bit of a crack at explaining to me and our audience just what the AI Collective is?

Catherine McMillan 3:36

AJ, take us away.

AJ Green 3:38

Yes. The AI Collective is a global, nonprofit grassroots community that focuses on one thing and one thing only. Which is human flourishing in the AI era and specifically the question that we try to accomplish is, what does it mean to be human in the AI era? We unite pioneers on the frontier of AI in forums worldwide, and currently over 150 plus chapters in 50 plus countries with 170,000 members. Insert stat line here. Thank you.

Paul Bellows 4:09

I love it. Very concise. Now, I assume that what you don't mean is if the Terminator comes for me and my mom, Sarah Connor, that you're gonna be the one defending me, but, can you gimme a couple of examples of just what it means, to be human forward in the AI space? Is there a good story that comes from the work you've been doing lately just to help folks understand what that means.

Catherine McMillan 4:31

I think one of the, best is our new series that we launched, I think in the fall of last year, in 2025. Which is we had this open build series in partnership with Windsurf, which got acquired by Cognition. And the idea behind the series is that anybody around the world, can build regardless of geography, regardless of how technical you were or weren't. And we wanted to put everyone in the same space where they could use the latest and greatest AI tools together in an environment that was low stakes, where they were working on, something that they were personally passionate about and seeing an idea come to life. So one of the things that I think has been really powerful as an observer and steward of the community, is seeing the distance between an idea and an impact shorten because previously we had to write emails by hand; we had to write code by hand, and now you can just take a small fragment of idea and turn it into something a lot bigger in a fraction of the time.

AJ Green 5:36

I think just to double tap on that as well, I think one of the best things that came outta this open build process was looking at people that come from non-technical backgrounds and helping them metabolize AI. In particular, we really believe that there's this thing called a trust gap. Which is that, over time, institutions are losing trust whether that be corporations, national governments, however, technology is on a rapid acceleration faster than ever and continues to do so every single day. That area in between those two is the trust gap that we try to solve. So I think a huge thing of what Catherine's talking about is how do we make sure that AI is used by the many and not just by the 1% that are governing everything that we do.

Paul Bellows 6:18

I love that you went to trust right away, and I did wanna get to this later in our conversation but, trust is such an important thing. And the research tells us that for strange reasons, despite the fact that public institutions are generally built to help us, and corporations are basically built to sell something to us, most people, in at least the Western world as we might define it, trust corporations more than public institutions in 2026. Which is, it's counterintuitive, but it's true right now. And I think there's a huge opportunity to help bring people together here and to rebuild trust maybe in the right organizations too, potentially. This is just setting the table here a little bit'cause I think the other thing people need to understand is the scale of the AI Collective. So the AI Collective is months to years old, not years to decades old. Recording this conversation, January of 2026 and things are moving fast. As of this date and time, what's the scale of the AI collective in terms of people involved, organizers, you brought in countries you're operating, in, what are some of the stats behind the organization?

AJ Green 7:21

Yeah, This is gonna blow your absolute socks off. Okay we have been in operations for two and a half years at this point, right? The majority of our community growth came about in the last six months with over 80% of our current member base coming within that period of time. As of today, at this very moment in time, we are operating in over 50 countries. In total we have close to 200,000 total members. And as a result, and I think the most important thing that I'm really proud of is the amount of people that have stepped up to lead. So this is our internal team is almost at 500 total people. So these are people that are volunteering their time, energy, and effort into saying,"Hey, I wanna step up to lead the AI revolution of my city." So beyond the total stats of chapters and our total members just the fact that we've convinced so many people to step on board into this mission I think is a phenomenal thing.

AJ Green's Journey to the AI Collective

Paul Bellows 8:12

It's really a shocking stat for an organization. You might see a social media platform grow at that rate, but an organization with actual members, and with like volunteer and paid staff and that kind of growth rate is just, I don't know that there are a lot of comparables to that. So it's really useful I think just for folks listening to this to understand, you may not have heard of the AI Collective, but you're going to hear about the AI Collective. It is going to become a big force in our culture and just given this massive trust gap and the way regular people, the average human on the street feels disconnected from and maybe alienated from AI, that there's that trust gap, an absolutely necessary force in our culture right now. Question, maybe AJ I'll throw to you first, I know you've got an interesting entrepreneurial story, but how did you get involved in the AI Collective? What was your path in and maybe tell me a little bit about what you're doing at the AI Collective now as you get into that story.

AJ Green 9:00

Yeah, absolutely. And Paul, just one thing I wanna highlight with this growth these are the stats that feel almost too good to be true, which is that all of that growth has accrued without a single dollar of investment. And to make it even better, we have never out bounded somebody once in our lives, whether that's a partner, a team member, a new chapter, all of this is completely organic. It is a growth engine of its own. So this is not with some large multimillion dollar marketing budgets to make this happen. This is literally a nonprofit grassroots. My journey leading here was pretty unconventional. I was not born next to a GPU. I was not writing TypeScript in the crib, was actually non-technical for most of my life. My first career in life was a professional athlete, so I was an Olympic weightlifter. And my job description, if I can curse, if that's okay.

Paul Bellows 9:47

You're allowed.

AJ Green 9:48

Okay. Cheers. It was lift heavy shit. That was all I did and I loved it. I loved it. But unfortunately I had an injury that put me outta the sport, left me paralyzed for a bit of time, and it was through rehabilitation that I found technology instead of finding Jesus, I found technology. And after going in and getting educated and understanding that, hey, there is so much opportunity here, I think I saw AI as the most disruptive tech in all of humanity, and I recognized that I wanted to get off the sidelines and get involved. So I launched a startup and my first startup was really focused on minority-owned businesses and the Pacific Northwest where I'm from. And my goal was not to change the world. My goal is just to change my hometown. And I just wanted to be the person that was responsible for introducing AI to businesses and helping revolutionize my backyard. Lo and behold, that ended up turning into a larger venture than I ever anticipated. Ended up turning that to a Venture Studio, dropping products all the time, taught me a lot about how to move quickly but then also how to listen to users and make sure that you are giving the world what it wants. I left that world in 2025. And I came across the AI Collective from a friend. He basically was just like,"Hey, I'm going to this AI thing. You should check it out." And shout out to David De Guan for that. He was the one that originally put me on. Anyhow, I had a chat. Yeah he's a great guy. He's actually a regional director with us right now too. Still with the organization and everything. But anyhow, so I had my first chat with Chappy and Chappy is our Executive Director, one of our founders. And I think immediately I felt the sparks and was just like, okay, this guy gets it. He's really trying to push on the right path. Fast forward a week, I had my first all hands, and then, by the way, this is as a nonprofit volunteer in Portland, Oregon where I'm based. In our all hands. I think I literally got my mind blown in that meeting and was like, there are so many things in which the collective is doing so much beyond events that I just became obsessed. Next thing I know, I started working within all the different work streams, volunteering all my time to the point of where my wife's calling me half crazy and I'm literally like, I'm neglecting work to work at a nonprofit. She's what the hell is wrong with you? And so next thing I know, I'm like, Hey guys, I really love what we're doing here. Can I actually step on and do this full-time? So that's when I joined I dunno, times relative maybe six months ago. And then the rest is history

Catherine McMillan 12:03

I feel like we've lived multiple lifetimes in just the past year alone, and I remember AJ, I was, I knew you were gonna enjoy the team. I knew it was inevitable and I gilded the path as much as I humanly could to make sure that you got on the team as soon as possible because you were making damage and the world needed to see AJ Green fully unleashed.

AJ Green 12:27

And I remember when you joined the team as well, I literally, like that whole saying of like, where were you when Michael Jackson died? That's how I feel about Catherine. I was like, I know exactly where I was, what I was doing. Dude, you don't know this, but I actually know exactly the moment in time in which you told me, Hey, I'm coming onto the team full time. And I was like, thank the heavens. Yeah, crazy stuff.

Paul Bellows 12:47

I want hear what this moment was that AJ will never forget, what was your path into the the AI Collective?

Catherine McMillan 12:55

One of the great things about the team and our community of organizers is that we all have different stories. I feel like it goes without saying I was not an Olympic weightlifter and I very rarely lift heavy shit. But, I did make a lot of pivots very early on in my career, so I graduated with a bachelor's in history and education, in 2022. Immediately did the thing that most people do when they go from a liberal arts college and don't know what to do with their life. They go into management consulting. So I did that. I worked there for about eight months in strategy. It felt like I was living the dream. I could do all the brain work, the strategy work, I got to go to all the fancy offices. It felt amazing. But I made a commitment to do a Fulbright program teaching English in South Korea just because I didn't wanna be locked in to one particular world, and I wanted to expand my horizons and see what could happen if I could go from zero to one anywhere. And so I went to a place where I have no cultural context, language skills, and I had no friends there either, but I went and taught English in South Korea and there is when I got really interested in the startup space. So I, when I wasn't teaching high school boys English, I was spending the hours I had at night working in go to market for a South Korean startup, they were looking to expand into Europe and North America. And I helped navigate that process for them and onboard more users onto the platform. So that's where I cut my teeth in terms of the startup space. But that was also at the same time when I was seeing the impact of AI. Not only in my own life and how I was writing my lessons plans with AI, but also seeing the impact on the students that I was teaching. I saw them outsourcing a lot of their thinking to the LLMs, and that really had me thinking about how can we make sure that this really powerful technology is harnessed in a way that supplements and augments human potential rather than replaces us. Did some online courses. One thing led to another and found myself in Washington DC, and I think also similar to AJ was a serendipitous encounter that led to all of this. And little known fact, Chappy is originally from Northern Virginia which is just a stone's throw from Washington DC and I was attending a DC Tech meetup. Because I was trying to find my people, right? Where I'm in the government town, right? Where are my techies? Where are the people that are gonna get me and understand me? So I went into the tech meetup and at the end there's this community microphone where you can go up and pitch for 20 seconds about an event, your community or your startup. You can even pitch yourself for a job and Chappy's little brother ended up going up to the mic and talking about what was, at the time, the Gen AI Collective and how they were looking to expand in the region. And I remember just adding him on LinkedIn afterwards and realizing this is a this is a high school kid, not just a college kid, this is a high school kid. Wait, am I gonna put my trust in starting a chapter for this random organization that I don't know anything about from this high school kid? And I was like, absolutely. And so I met up with him for coffee. And then he basically introduced me to Choppy. The rest is history. I was already hosting meetups at that point in the city because I wanted to be the magnet for all the people that I could relate to. And from there built the volunteer team around me in DC and last year, we hosted over 40 events which a volunteer run organization, most of that time I was actually a volunteer. This was before I joined full time. And so last April-ish May is when things started to accelerate, you could feel that the tone was shifting, that momentum, the snowball is going down the mountain and it's in accelerating it's getting bigger, and the team needed more, they needed more capacity. And so Chappy reached out to me and he said,"Hey. I'd love for you to join as the first hire for the AI Collective." And at that time I was working, of course, in management consulting because I didn't know what to do when I came back from Korea. So I went back into consulting and thought it over for about a week. And decided, you know this is where my heart is. This is the most important thing I could be doing with my time right now. So I decided to quit my corporate job with the 401k matching and healthcare benefits. I was 24 at the time. I was like, I have two more years left on my parents' healthcare plan, so I'm gonna take this risk while I still have it. And the rest is history. And then your question about where I was when I was talking to AJ. I was in my room just like staring at the ceiling talking to AJ. That's where I was.

Diverse Team and High Agency

Paul Bellows 18:11

I'm also like Catherine, not somebody who lifts heavy shit. I'm a mid strength human. The people I've met so far in the AI Collective,'cause I met lots of folks that are involved now in the last week or so since I've been joining meetings and things. There's an infectious energy and the people who have showed up to join and talk about and engage with AI Collective are people that have a passion and emotional, like an intellectual and emotional connection to this organization, the purpose. As you're seeing people come on board who's joining. What kinds of people are coming on board? Are these industry people? Are these academics? Are these politicians? Are these citizens and business owners?

Catherine McMillan 18:49

The answer is anybody, literally. You look at AJ and I and think, oh, these kids, these crazy kids running the world. No, there are people that are two, three times our age on our team that have more years of experience than we have years of life. Truly, we have those people on our team. We also have college students on our team, we have people who have never written a line of code on the team, but it's anybody. But it's not just anybody. The people that are on our team have one thing in common, across the board, they're high agency people. And I wanna define what high agency means. It means that, these are the type of people that don't like to wait for permission to do things. They see something they realize that there's a gap and they find a solution or they get it done themselves. So there are of course like other traits and attributes of the people that are on our team in terms of like accountability, leadership, interest in the tech space. But agency is the most. Important defining quality, and I see AJ's nodding your head over there. Feel free to jump in.

AJ Green 20:05

I just love how that is a question that we approached in two totally different ways, and I think that's what makes it so great, right? Is the fact that, there's such a complimentary thing between how we approach this and that's that there's so many different types of people that are here. I was gonna answer from a statistical perspective, I was gonna say, hey, 72% fall into three categories. We have founders, investors, and we have people that are developers slash engineers. So I was gonna answer it from like a here's the fact of the matter from an audience perspective, but that doesn't sell the whole picture of hey, there are so many different things. There's founders that are IPO, there's founders that are pre-seed. There's investors that are cutting their first angel check. There's investors that have been investing for 45 years. And then there's so many people that fall outside of those categories as well. Yeah, a hundred percent. I think that, when I think about the collective in terms of who are we, I think we're the people that have the commonality of wanting to get off the sidelines and wanting to do something about it, right? Seeing the trends of where AI is headed and saying let's do something about my local community to make sure that we don't fall behind and that we take advantage of this monumental moment in time.

Corporate Partnerships and Community Trust

Paul Bellows 21:10

That's a great pivot point to the next question I wanna ask about. I think for a lot of folks, AI seems to have been moving at a pace that is scary fast, like genuinely scary fast. We're being told it's gonna take over the universe, we've been told about the singularity, we've been told about the dangers, through science fiction like realities of what it could do. And these large corporations and the entire stock market seem to be driving this forward, like a freight train into our social space. And we don't seem to have a lot of opportunity to say, wait could we just tap on the brakes, right? So there's this natural reaction of people, I love this, that people are rising up saying no, we're not getting left behind, we wanna be involved, we want to have that agency. I also wanna pause just for a second to say, the corporate partners you've managed to get, it's like the stock market list. Everybody has a logo on your site. Can you tell me just a little bit about what the corporate partnerships mean, what your corporate partners interests are in the AI Collective. How are they engaged? What does it mean to have these corporate partners?

AJ Green 22:08

I would start by saying that every partner that we work with must be mission aligned with us in the sense that them as a corporation might have a slightly different approach on AI[Artificial Intelligence], AGI[Artificial General Intelligence], ASI[Artificial Superintelligence], insert any other variation here. The fundamental thing is that when they host an event with us, what I always tell partners is, hey, this is an event for the community. This is not an event to push an agenda. This is not an event to push a product. You recognize by getting involved with the AI Collective that the mission comes first and partners become second. We work with the biggest names in the world, but they still recognize the value of the community. I think another thing that we're seeing too is that there are so many. Companies and corporations nowadays that are seeing the value of in-person, I think they're really looking for trust. And I think that tech has a trust problem fundamentally across the board. And we may potentially be a solution to that, where there might be companies that say, hey, we are trying to do really good things with X, Y, Z product, the X, Y, Z initiative, but we cannot break the barrier. Everybody doesn't seem to trust us, and so therefore they come to us because they recognize that, hey, community is Civilization 4.0, which we can talk about later. But that fundamentally means that we operate off a high trust environments. So all long story short, every single person who works with us, that is the number one thing that we look at. Is this person mission aligned? Do they understand the gravity of the situation? And are they okay with it not being a corporate sellout, but actually like creating opportunities to educate and help people metabolize the AI era.

Paul Bellows 23:41

I love it. Is there an example of a corporate partnership where that's been really true? You don't have to name a name, but just where you found someone and they just showed up in a way you didn't expect them. Feel free to name drop.'cause it's really the list is really impressive.

AJ Green 23:54

Yeah. Some of our current partners include OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, Neas, like the who's who, like you said. There's a company that immediately comes to mind and that is Cognition. Cognition, which was previously Windsurf. Little known fact, we literally had just hosted our first event. This is a crazy fact. We had just hosted our first event together on a Friday before the news about OpenAI breaking that deal. And just for those that were not familiar, OpenAI was set to acquire Windsurf for a$2.4 billion buyout. This was all the talk in the town was headed towards that. We hosted our event on Friday. We host a bi-coastal takeover with Miami and San Francisco, and this is the first open build format that we've ever tried, which personally, one of my favorite event formats to date. We then see the breaking news on Monday. Hey, OpenAI has pulled outta the deal, Cognition has stepped in, so on and so forth. So we literally helped them navigate that from a trust perspective. Hey, how are you gonna communicate this to people? Lo and behold, we have now hosted, I don't know, Catherine what, 20 30 events together. Yeah. And we'll continue to do X amount more, which, so we can not say that on the podcast, but the reason being like like I say, the real reason of why we feel like they're so community aligned was the fact of an open build. An open build by nature is something in which they don't have hackathon prizes. They don't have a super defined agenda. The sole purpose is putting hands on keys. It is not about getting new users, it's not about retaining users, what they really wanted to do, Matt, shout out to Matt from Windsurf. He was the one who's been stewarding this. He was like, guys, it is a success if people learn something new and if they get to roll up their sleeves and get dirty in the process. And I think that was such a good framing that since we've now recommended that to so many other partners and we think that's, there's so much value in just experimenting with AI.

Catherine McMillan 25:52

Yeah, AJ, that was definitely the one that came to mind. Another one that came to mind in just the serendipity of it was Manis. Because this was another exceptional case of timing where the world was moving at the same time that we were collaborating directly with the team. And so we had an event on Friday, I believe it was also a Friday. We had a one week turnaround for this event because the travel schedule for them was, there was just a lot of X factors,

AJ Green 26:21

six days.

Catherine McMillan 26:24

Pardon me, six days, not a week.

AJ Green 26:26

It counts, that day counts.

Catherine McMillan 26:28

It counts. And so we are going jumping through walls, running through hoops, anything conceivable to make this happen. We are oversubscribed at the event over a thousand signups. And only really a capacity for 250 in the room, so a lot of unhappy campers who couldn't come to that event. But the day of the morning of the event. There was, a release from OpenAI for their multi-agent, and we had the perfect opportunity to respond to that that night with Manus. And not only did we just totally scrap all the programming that we were gonna do for that day, but we also decided to do a live stream of the event so that anybody, anywhere around the world could tune in and watch. And that's, and incidentally enough, the name of the event was Manis for Everybody. So it was pretty, pretty on the nose there.

AJ Green 27:31

I think the context of this is imagine that you're a Manus, right? You have just released your product that goes viral, right? That same day, the largest enterprise AI in the world, the largest frontier model says, I'm going to eat your lunch.

Paul Bellows 27:47

Right?

AJ Green 27:47

They drop a competitive product. The coolest thing in my opinion was, I remember when we hopped on the call with the team, they were so happy that OpenAI dropped that product because they were like, we're validated. They're like, they want to build what we have. This is the best thing that could have happened. I get goosebumps thinking about this. Anywho I chatted with Red from Manus after the acquisition with Meta, the$2 billion acquisition that happened maybe a couple of weeks ago. I was tweeting at him and I was saying, congratulations. He actually reposted that thread and said, this was one of my favorite events to date. That was like the coolest day ever. And you guys handled it like a champ. So I get goosebumps talking about that event. I'm literally shaking because that was like, that was the time in which, one thing that I love that the collective does, and this is actually a pretty big focus for us, is create historical moments in time. That is a time we'll be able to look back five years from now and be like, damn, that was a day, that was a day. We helped steward that. And so proud to do what we do.

The Role of AI Collective

Paul Bellows 28:45

Again, it's almost shocking that the range that the AI Collective is covering right now. From local meetups, I was in a group the other day just where there's someone from Mauritius just talking about the event they're gonna run in Mauritius, and then you're also like in these multi-billion dollar, headline setting deals, and right at the absolute frontier of what's happening on the commercial side. In our podcast, The 311 Podcast, we all to talk to people, in government who are using tech to get things done, to make government work in better ways. I think government right now is baffled at what position to take vis-a-vis AI. Are we a legislator? Are we enabler? It's an economic engine. It is a danger to people. Government is really struggling to say, do we regulate? And so I just, I wanna pivot just for a little bit just to talk about like versus government, which should be large, slow moving, thinking broadly, thinking long term, this is a time to be agile, to move quickly and just the usefulness for society of the AI Collective versus maybe a government body. When we need to be adaptive, when we need to move quickly, when we need to be in multiple places at the same time and be so responsive. Catherine, you said something the other day and we were just chatting in preparation for this, I talked about government, and you're like we can't legislate this stuff right now. Now the US has done a really radical move in the last few months of just saying not only are there no rules, there cannot be rules, that's maybe a bridge farther. But just looking at the role of AI Collective versus how the two of you look at government and public sector and the role there and how you're different and maybe what would frustrate you if government got more involved?

Catherine McMillan 30:16

Yeah, I think this is a really interesting question because, of course, I live in Washington DC and so this is in my backyard and actually we have two events coming up, talking at both sides of the table, both on the regulatory side, but also the innovation and entrepreneurship side. So we're hosting a panel discussion with someone from the administration and a foundation talking about racism and LLMs. How is that propagated up at a government level, is it a corporate responsibility? And then just a couple weeks after that we're doing AI Demo night on the Hill, literally in Capitol Hill, and we're bringing together five to seven demoists of AI Companies in the region. So, sometimes it feels like a paradox. We're holding a lot, at the same time, but the most important thing is to be an informant. An informant of public interests, what people are really thinking about and feeling. pressure testing that at the events themselves. And that's exactly what we hope to do. We hope to be able to capture and harness those insights and then relay them to the decision making bodies and people who need to know. We were talking maybe 15 minutes ago about, big tech and how they've come to terms with the fact that IRL community field marketing, in-person presence is very important. And I think with the rise of digital assets and platforms and the internet, it's become a lot easier to abstract the user experience away from the product That investment in the users and the people who are using the platform has gone away. So by actually being this bridge and creating avenues for more user groups and dialogue between the companies and themselves. Hopefully it's better for us to be able. To build more consensus on what we should be doing as a tech forward global citizenry. I don't know what to say'cause like we are all stakeholders in this at this point. It's not a US thing. It's not a North America thing. It's not a... it is everybody.

AJ Green 32:32

I'll give a hot take and we probably should not say this on air, but you know what? Screw it. Here we are. We are meeting with national governments. That is something that we are doing as an organization. Not because we want to, but because we fricking need to. Like we see what's, we see what's happening in the world and we are trying to effectively bridge the gap, like Catherine is saying, I think that becomes one of the most pivotal roles of the AI Collective. Hot take. But there are places in which national governments do not want to be communicating. They can't get on the same page. Can we be a conduit of change and can we influence policy at a international level? And doing so by accurately representing the constituents of our, the global citizens. I think. It is impossible to do what we do and ignore that fact. I think that is the truth, is that as we continue to scale to becoming a global organization and very soon we'll have chapters in every country around the world and we'll be literally representing the entire globe. I think it would be remiss to say that we very actively think about our role in this larger picture and how we can do a great job of representing the people that are part of our community, which is the entire global audience.

Catherine McMillan 33:43

The important part is the representation. It's not like we are handwriting the policy. You're saying what people can and can't do on a global scale. It's not like we're writing those policies. We're an informant. We're educating people who have the ability to make a decision and be another data point or source For them to derive insight and knowledge from.

Moonshots & the Secret Sauce Ahead

Paul Bellows 34:04

There's a global comms and consulting shop called Edelman, and each year they published something called the trust barometer. And they've been doing it for over 25 years and in 2024, they recorded the lowest global levels of trust in public institutions in the history of their report. But they also had an antidote for that. They actually had a recipe for what public institutions, governments, government agencies, what they should do. And the number one goals, learn to listen to people and respond to what they're actually thinking, worried about, and caring about. And I just think I'm seeing the AI Collective as an agency of listening. Of hearing voices, of bringing disparate voices together, both from industry, from, the general public from academic institutions, from all levels of the economy. It just seems to me that you're playing a really essential role at this moment in time. I wish we could talk for about two hours,'cause I'm just not bored right now. And I could keep going, but just in the interest of a reasonable length podcast episode, I think we need to wrap at this point, but I wanna stop by saying. Let's fast forward five years. So five years in the future. You're continuing to grow at, if not the break net speed that you're growing at now. And something similar to that. So you're growing rapidly, five years in the future. What are some of the things that the AI Collective has achieved during that time?

Catherine McMillan 35:26

Moonshots.

Paul Bellows 35:26

Yep.

Catherine McMillan 35:27

I mean, if, If a thousand chapters is the goal of this year, then in five years, 5,000 chapters, is that right?

AJ Green 35:34

More, a hundred percent more.

Catherine McMillan 35:35

I don't even, I can't even put a number on it, Paul. I don't even know how big we could potentially get... millions.

Paul Bellows 35:42

What's different in the world because of the AI Collective, what have you accomplished?

Catherine McMillan 35:47

I don't think it's necessarily what we do, but what we inspire others to do too. So we are at the beginning of a another like counterculture moment where people are wanting to get off their phones, they're wanting to reevaluate their relationship with technology and of course like we're like a pretty tech forward community, but we're doing it in the least tech forward means possible which is in person and like sharing air space And I think going back to that's gonna be the important thing is putting communities and people at the center of everything, of progress. And of course, like we wanna be the technical anchor of that, but we want for other problems at a global scale for us to be able to solve together. There's so many problems out there and we have plenty of smart people. Why can't we solve them?

AJ Green 36:39

I'll tell you our secret sauce, man. This is our recipe. Okay. We have to bring people together, right? So we have to make room for people to go face to face and meet together. That is ground zero. If we do that, then we can exchange insights. If we can bring people together, then we can have difference of opinions and people can have knowledge transfer through exchanging insights. If we can accurately do that, then we can package that as collective wisdom, which means that we can go ahead and inform decision makers and whatever that field is. And then ultimately we can drive collective progress. Those are the four steps in which we must achieve if we want to have this global impact. Going back to the moonshots'cause I do have some crazy moonshots to put out there. Nobody has a crystal ball, five years. I'd hate to make predictions in five years. Okay. I barely wanna make predictions in one year, but if I had to make a five. Could we have more representation than entire national governments? Could we unlock more economic GDP than entire countries do? Could we put together millions of people? How many millions of people could be introduced AI to that otherwise would turn away from it because it's too much. They don't understand it, they're not able to metabolize it. How many millions of lives could be impacted then have trickle effects on for years to decades? I really, the reason why I stepped away from running a startup and doing that fun life, is because I think that the collective is the only organization that actually has a shot at achieving this goal. And that if we do our job correctly, if every day we show up and we do what we're supposed to do and we continue to take moonshots, we continue to fight for people, then I think that the world is forever better because of it. And Catherine's saying, I think we will actually spark a movement that is far bigger than our organization ourselves. Our goal is not necessarily to be number one in the world. Our goal is to change the way that people view in-person connections. And hopefully that can inspire the next generation of builders that come after that. And I think we'll look back in time. I hope so. Five years from now is a lot of time in AI. That's 50 years in pre AI time and who knows, right? think we'll hopefully look back in time and be like, damn, that was the moment in which the AI Collective kind of steward this new type of organization, Community 4.0, the new means of trust, the new means of economic security for everybody. That's what I hope we inspire.

Paul Bellows 39:02

I don't think there's anything more important at this time in our culture, in our society, and in our world, in people talking to people, and I love that's your secret sauce, that you apply to everything. Kudos. It's what we do here at the podcast, and it's the. The only way I know to get really good things to happen is that people gotta talk to the other people. So I just, beautiful insight and I think that puts a bow on the episode. Thank you both of you for giving us some of your time.'cause I know you're busy. I know you have a lot on the go and I can't wait to look back on this in a year and see, I can't believe I've got to talk to Catherine and AJ back when they still had time to talk to me. So thanks for giving me an hour of your time.

AJ Green 39:40

Of course. Paul, what a pleasure. What a pleasure. Thank you for having us.

Catherine McMillan 39:42

This is amazing. Thank you.

Paul Bellows 39:48

Thanks for joining us today. AJ and Catherine discussed the rapid growth and global impact of the AI Collective, a nonprofit organization focused on human flourishing in the AI era. We touched on the diversity of their members, their grassroots initiatives, successful corporate partnerships, and the importance of in-person connections. They also explore the role of the AI Collective in bridging the trust gap between technology and society and the potential for influencing policy at national and international levels. I think the most refreshing theme was their focus on in-person connections as their secret weapon. But as someone emerged in the public sector, I also heard a challenge to government from civil society. At this current moment, things are moving faster than legislation can change, and we're going to need new ways of working together if we're going to protect who and what needs to be protected. We are going to keep having conversations like this all season. Thanks for tuning in. If you've got ideas for guests, we should speak to, send us an email to info@the311podcast.com I'd like to thank my producer, Kathy Watton and our audio and graphics team, Frederick Brummer and Ahmed Khalil. The public sector is about all of us, and when it's done right can be a key ingredient for a better world. This has been the 311 podcast, and I'm your host Paul Bellows.