From Opinions to Commitments: Unstable Assignments and Silent Choices in AI-Mediated Proposals

Abstract

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly being used to turn citizens' opinions into collective proposals. These proposals can make assignments: who should act, what must be done, how much one should spend and by when. However, if the assignments change when the same opinions are processed again, publishing a single proposal can hide alternatives that participants never get to see. We examined this issue in four LLM mediators (three open-weight and one commercial) using opinions from DeliberationBank and Polis. For each task, a mediator drafted a proposal from thirty opinions five times, varying either the random seed or the order of the opinions. In 17% of five-run sets from the open-weight mediators and 20% from the commercial one, some runs contained assignments while others did not. Reordering the opinions changed the assignments almost as often as replacing them with opinions from different citizens. Three human annotators confirmed that the detected differences between runs were real, although the LLM judge overstated how often they occurred. Substantial variation remained under four safeguards: temperature zero, a commercial mediator, draft selection, and draft merging. The mediator's objective also shaped representation: prompts seeking agreement covered minority positions much less often than prompts asking to describe differences. A single proposal can therefore obscure choices in both the assignments it proposes and the views it excludes. We propose audits that make alternative assignments visible and disclose the objective behind each proposal.