GROUND BREAKING AI TECHNOLOGY AT THE CAUSE COLLECTIVE - WHERE FUNDING SHOULD GO !

Demand Aggregation AI stack and associated app, myFetu?, is radical.

At The Cause Collective (TCC) our technology, particularly our demand aggregation stack and its associated app, myFetu?, is a radical departure from conventional methods of social service delivery and resource allocation. Our AI tech stack acknowledges Nobel Prize winning research and insights on the limitations of traditional systems.

This is TCC's radical answer to the radical need for social formation technology.

THE TCC APPROACH IS A PARADIGM SHIFT:

1. Reject "One-Size-Fits-All" Solutions: At The Cause Collective NZ we challenge the idea that broad, standardised interventions are effective for resolving complex social problems.

Instead, at TCC we say that controlled-cost, value for money, social transformation and clinical intervention requires personalised, community-driven solutions using real-time, and highly granular data [TCC Board 17 July 2024, TCC Board 21 August 2024].

The "choice architecture" described in Kahneman's (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow explains how framing options can influence outcomes. So instead of relying on default options, TCC's technology platform will empower communities to specify their needs. This ensures more effective resource allocation and culturally responsive services.

2. Data-Driven Tech & Decision-Making: At TCC our approach emphasises the use of data to understand community needs and improve outcomes [TCC Board 18 September 2024].

This departs from management approaches which rely on intuition or opinion.

As Dr Aubrey Daniels’ (2007) Bringing Out the Best in People points out, "those who manage only from personal experience, and the thoughts and feelings that accompany that experience, are subject to unpredictable results". TCC's commitment to data-driven decision-making aligns with Dr Daniels' call for scientific, smart measurements, ongoing improvement, approach to management.

3. Cause and Effect: At TCC we emphasise and drive the identification of root causes in complex problems. Root cause determination and hypotheses testing is central to our TCC problem solving and situational analysis methodology.

No surprises .. at the similarity to the critical thinking approach advocated in Kahneman's (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow.

It stresses that understanding the underlying mechanisms is critical before intervening.

Gee .. doesn't everyone do this?

Using our tools for prerequisites analysis, current reality trees, and future reality trees, TCC addresses the causes & conditions holding problems in place - not just the symptoms.

Our TCC AI tech stack is informed by prerequisites analysis, current reality trees, and future reality trees.

This contrasts with traditional approaches. They address issues piecemeal instead of the whole environment.

4. Halo Effect? Sigh .. think Defect: At TCC our approach challenges what is described as the "Halo Effect" in Kahneman's (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow. In that situation the stories of successful organisations often exaggerate the impact of leadership style and management practices on outcomes. The TCC approach, focussing on community needs and feedback loops, uses TCC's proprietary evaluation model for tracking impact, distribution, and performance.

How else can better results be delivered?

If not by actively engaging communities scaled by technology to the granularity of one family and/or one individual !?

5. Teaching Communities to Fish: TCC empowers communities through direct feedback and active participation in the commissioning process.

This is a ground-up show stopper contrast with top-down models.

TCC’s approach aligns with the ideas of participatory democracy in TCC Strategy Papers [TCC Strategy Papers 15 November 2023]. By giving a voice to the community, and ensuring services are tailored to specific needs, TCC's approach promotes and causes more effective community-led approaches.

6. Collaboration for innovation: Co-design and collaboration spirit and ethic at TCC powers its programs. Especially with youth. Time and again this demonstrates the power of innovative solutions.

This is evident in the South Auckland Creative and Tech Hub (SACTH).

This demonstrates what Christian and Griffiths' (2016) Algorithms to Live By suggest about how human minds can work in parallel with machine learning. Incorporating multiple viewpoints and ideas makes the team more skilled; better able to identify primary causes so as to develop mitigations, eliminations and effective responses to complex problems.

7. Traditional Metrics are so yesterday: Our TCC focus on measuring the return on investment (ROI) of our social programs is driven by need to move beyond traditional metrics of success.

Not enough NGO's acknowledge that metrics have a half life.

Our Board's governance ethic and our CEO's operating mindset is to capture value for money within service delivery, creating new methodologies to track the return on investment of our initiatives.

This aligns with the criticisms of traditional approaches in Sandel's (2020) The Tyranny of Merit.

Those approaches cause resources & talent misallocation because the emphasis is placed on short-term financial gain instead of long-term value and impact.

Our AI tech stack will capture all the data & variations necessary to improve existing metrics and formulate relevant new ones.

8. Common Sense has nothing on Common Science: At TCC we are data-driven.

Our cause-and-effect critical thinking systems and ethic pushes back against "common sense" solutions that are not evaluated.

As Daniels’ (2007) Bringing Out the Best in People notes, many companies and leaders rely on folklore and common-sense solutions which are not effective or evaluated. The same applies to social programs. TCC's emphasis on evaluation ensures that programs are scientifically tested and have measurable results. This reduces waste and maximises impact on community outcomes.

TCC'S AI DEMAND AGGREGATION SYSTEM IS UNIQUE

But it is not just a technological innovation.

It is the paradigm shift which transforms the ability to address the shortcomings of traditional systems. It promotes personalised, data-driven, community-led, cause-and-effect-focused interventions. This aligns with many key insights in Thinking Fast and Slow, Bringing out the Best in People, and The Tyranny of Merit.

REFERENCES

Christian, B., & Griffiths, T. (2016). Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions. HarperCollins.

Daniels, A. (2007). Bringing out the best in people. William Morrow.

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Sandel, M. J. (2020). The tyranny of merit: What's become of the common good? Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

TCC Board 17 July 2024. (2024, July 17). TCC Board Papers.

TCC Board 21 August 2024. (2024, August 21). TCC Board Papers.

TCC Board 18 September 2024. (2024, September 18). TCC Board Papers.

TCC Strategy Papers 15 November 2023. (2023, November 15). TCC Strategy Papers.

For more 16 information contact me: [email protected]

?.