Broad Listening: Open-Source Policy Making

Executive Director Jess Scully speaks with Takahiro Anno, an AI engineer, science fiction writer and newly elected member of Japan's House of Councillors. Anno shares his remarkable journey from software engineer to politician, driven by a desire to "fix the bugs" in society and democracy.

Anno's political rise has been rapid. In his first-ever campaign for Tokyo Governor in July 2024, Anno received over 150,000 votes, an unprecedented milestone for a candidate in their 30s with no prior political experience. Following this success, he founded Team Mirai in May 2025 and, just months later, won a seat in Japan's national parliament with 2% of the vote, securing a six-year term.

The conversation explores his innovative "broad listening" approach, which challenges the traditional "broadcasting" model of politics. Anno treated his campaign like an open-source software project, publishing policies on GitHub and openly accepting "pull requests" from citizens. During the Tokyo campaign, his team received over 100 proposals and merged more than 80, continuously updating their 100-page policy book just like open-source software.

Anno also details the technology that made this possible. His team created "AI Anno," an AI avatar hosted on YouTube Live that could engage voters 24/7, bypassing legal restrictions limiting human campaigning to 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. The avatar enabled two-way communication: citizens could see each other's questions, making it easier to participate, while Anno's team analyzed conversation logs to identify and address common concerns.

For his national campaign, Anno's team scaled participation dramatically using Model Context Protocol (MCP). Citizens could simply converse with an AI, which would automatically generate GitHub pull requests on their behalf, removing technical barriers entirely. This approach gathered over 10,000 proposals, 100 times more than his first campaign in Tokyo.

Critically, Anno made all of these tools open source, embracing openness as a core value and the most practical way for a small party to create systemic change. Politicians from other parties have already committed to using these tools in future campaigns.

Jess and Anno discuss his mission for the next six years: using technology to enable large-scale deliberative democracy. While many fear AI's potential to erode democracy through deepfakes and misinformation, Anno provides a powerful, working example of how these tools can make democracy more transparent, participatory, and responsive to citizens' voices.

Host: Jess Scully

Guest: Takahiro Anno

Producer: Jack Henderson

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