Rick Jacobus

Principal at Street Level Advisors; Strategy and innovation consultant focused on equitable urban development

[Homewise, Inc. @homewisenm]

Thank you to everyone who joined our Livability Speaker Series event featuring housing policy expert @rjacobus discussing innovative solutions to the housing crisis! Stay tuned for updates on our next event! (📷: Roberto Rosales)

Learn more here: https://t.co/VaTizmoM9D

[Rebecca Saltzman @RebeccaForEC]

"8 in 10 BART trips begin or end in... downtown San Francisco, downtown Oakland or downtown Berkeley." If BART enters a death spiral, so will our downtowns.

Gov Newsom and CA legislature must save our downtowns by funding transit - time is running out.

https://t.co/DM70UDpk5X

[The Forge: Organizing Strategy and Practice @ForgeOrganizing]

Our people and communities deserve organizations and movements that exude joy, build power, and secure critical victories for working people.

Don't miss our latest by @MauriceWFP on #BuildingResilientOrgs

w/ @_convergencemag & @npquarterly https://t.co/Bb6jZ4hW5k

[Rick Jacobus @rjacobus]

@j2bryson Oh, thanks. So timely. I have been thinking a lot about embodiment ever since I started playing with ChatGPT. I think these models are showing that a lot of what we consider 'reasoning' is not that impressive after all and a lot of our 'smarts' are pre-verbal.

[Rick Jacobus @rjacobus]

@fbaum @ValisJason Yes, I have. It can correctly id comments that strike me as YIMBY and explain why it thinks they are YIMBY. The only problem is that it also claims totally neutral comments are YIMBY (or NIMBY) and makes up BS about why.

[Rick Jacobus @rjacobus]

#ChatGPT thinks it knows a #NIMBY when it sees one. I'm experimenting with AI to summarize detailed public comments that public agencies regularly receive about new development projects and public policies. The results are really stunning. https://t.co/l0gMX3j1Ai
#YIMBY

[Rick Jacobus @rjacobus]

@ultush Yes, the stakes are really high. Any new tech can be terrible or helpful for social equity. We have to engage with it to make it 'good.' I am just reporting that it is already doing a better job with nuanced opinion than most of the human summaries I have seen.

[Rick Jacobus @rjacobus]

@tmccormick @CommunityNotes @vjon @colinmegill @metaviv @UsePolis @jonathanstray Thanks Tim. I haven't seen https://t.co/CzsPhcXCw8 before. It seems very cool and relevant to the quest for "better" public engagement.

[Rick Jacobus @rjacobus]

@Natanael_vEuler Thanks, please feel free to reach out.

[Tim McCormick @tmccormick]

@rjacobus interesting experiment using AI #ChatGPT to analyze & summarize public comments. See also Polis which adds dimensions of statistical, discourse, deliberation analysis; used eg in #vTaiwan & Twitter @CommunityNotes platforms. https://t.co/FMqEbUrwXL c/@vjon @colinmegill @metaviv

[Jon 👾👾👾💥👾👾 @vjon]

4:1 compression of public comment content with salient points intact. @_fruchtose - robots are coming for your job!

[Elisha Harig-Blaine @HarigBlaine]

@rjacobus congratulations on the mention in the @TheAtlantic piece https://t.co/IYi5MkxLk2

[Rick Jacobus @rjacobus]

Read more about my process here: https://t.co/l0gMX3j1Ai

I would love to hear from anyone implementing a large scale public input process who would want to test this approach in the real world – with no guarantee of success.

[Rick Jacobus @rjacobus]

The system has the potential to evaluate comments in far more nuanced ways but it is not quite reliable enough yet. For example, it is capable of identifying comments that exhibit a strong NIMBY or YIMBY leaning but it wrongly attributes these perspectives to neutral comments.

[Shelterforce @Shelterforce]

@rjacobus explains how using restorative justice could shape the way housing policies move forward in the future. Read more here: https://t.co/J6hBSyLgxE

[Urban Habitat @Urban_Habitat]

American apartheid-era urban planning devastated whole communities & still play an outsized role in policy choices. We need a restorative justice mindset/efforts like increasing voices of low-income people of color in BOD, gov't, and decision-making roles. https://t.co/4S8mFvehqK