SOMOS Civic Lab

SOMOS Civic Lab
From Users to Citizens:
Experiments in Democratic
AI Governance
SOMOS Civic Lab
SOMOS Civic Lab
Vision & Mission
Citizens should have a voice in the future of AI.
Our mission is to democratically engage communities, civil society, and governments in Latin America & beyond to shape ethical deployment of technology impacting citizens’ lives.
We are building a global model for democratized AI governance by equipping civil society, public institutions and local communities with the tools they need to test, deliberate, and shape the ethical deployment of AI across key sectors.
SOMOS Civic Lab
Our Toolkit
Critical AI Literacy
We equip community participants to critically engage with generative AI and contribute meaningfully to public gen AI testing exercises.
Public AI testing exercises (gen AI red-teaming)
Communities directly evaluate gen AI tools for bias, harm, and cultural appropriateness. This is done via a custom platform and structured spaces for diverse stakeholders to reflect, share knowledge, debate trade-offs, and collectively develop recommendations for ethical AI deployment. 
Accountability Loop
Findings from the exercises are shared through public reports that amplify community voices, inform public policy, highlight risks and opportunities. By making results public and recurring, the process builds momentum for responsible action from model owners and ensures community oversight remains central to AI governance.
SOMOS Civic Lab
Verticals & Use Cases
Public Services
Testing LLMs used in citizen-facing services, gov chatbots, and other AI-powered government initiatives impacting citizens' lives.
Elections
Public auditing of AI platforms for innaccurate, biased or harmful voting-related information.
Climate
Red-teaming information integrity of AI generated content around climate justice, climate science, mitigation and adaptation.
Education
Assessing AI's role in edtech, including risks for bias and misinformation.
SOMOS Civic Lab
Our Ask: Piloting Collabs
We’re building these tools with civil society and local governments in global majority countries.
Who we are looking for: engaged public sector and civil society teams already integrating artificial intelligence into their public-facing work streams at different levels of technical maturity.
What we are looking for with your team: We pilot different modules of our process together and deliver our findings together. This research supports your ethical AI deployment and our data validation.
SOMOS Civic Lab
Meet the team
JP Gomes
João Paulo Gomes (Stanford, Google, Meta) is a researcher and strategist with a background in human-centered design, civic tech, and government. He is currently an Ethics & Technology Practitioner Fellow at Stanford University's McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, where he's developing a playbook to guide public red-teaming of GenAI systems in global majority countries.
Previously at Meta's Civic Action & Elections team, JP conducted research with users and experts globally to inform the development of civic-focused product interventions for equitable, informed, and safe participation in elections.
Before tech, JP spent a decade as a strategist in the public sector, leading public diplomacy and communication efforts at the Presidency of Brazil, UK Foreign Office, and UN Development Program to address challenges like climate change, poverty, and innovation.
Carlos Centeno
Carlos Centeno (MIT, United Nations) Carlos is Program Director at MIT Emerging Talent, where the team equips talented learners from migrant, refugee and displaced communities with computer science and life skills to become leading change agents in their communities. 
At MIT Carlos co-founded and led the Governance Lab’s Governance Innovation Initiative as Associate Director of Innovation (2021-2024). He worked at the convergence of engineering design, technology, and political behavioral 
science to co-develop ethical, tech-enabled governance solutions with both governments and non-governmental partners. He's the host of Power to the Who, MIT's Governance Innovation podcast.
Previously, Carlos worked at MIT Solve, an initiative of the President of MIT to solve the world’s greatest challenges through technology.
He served ten years with the United Nations World Food Programme, redesigning humanitarian interventions through a data and community-first approach, in refugee camps, tribal areas, and other complex environments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. 
SOMOS Civic Lab
Get in touch
hello@somosciviclab.com
SOMOS Civic Lab