Grassroot’s ‘Open Hearings’ tool catches attention of Atlas Network
from Grassroot Institute
“Harnessing AI for Government Transparency” was the title of a recent Atlas Network podcast featuring Grassroot of Hawaii Executive Vice President Joe Kent with host Michael Carnuccio.
The pair spoke in September at the Atlas Radical Innovation Summit in Mexico City about Grassroot’s “Open Hearings” project, which can monitor and summarize government hearings almost anywhere in the world and produce transcripts and summaries of those hearings almost immediately, enabling citizens to keep abreast of what their elected and unelected officials are doing supposedly on their behalf.
The Atlas Network, based in Arlington, Virginia, partners with almost 500 think tanks in over 100 countries that drive change in ideas, culture and policy, with the goal of removing barriers to opportunities and empowering individuals to live a life of choice. It recently selected Grassroot’s Open Hearings project as a finalist for its 2025 Templeton Freedom Award.
In his conversation with Carnuccio, Kent spoke about the inspiration behind Grassroot’s AI tool, its applications and the impact it has had, including inspiring policy changes after the 2023 Lahaina fires that helped cut excessive government regulations and speed up the town’s rebuilding process.
Kent also shared insights into the broader liberty movement in Hawaii, the challenges of working in a one-party state, and the importance of strategic and innovative approaches in achieving policy wins.
The discussion concludes with a look at the Grassroot Institute’s future goals and Kent’s reflections on his journey from being a music teacher on Maui to a policy advocate.
To see Carnuccio’s entire 38-minute conversation with Kent, click on the YouTube image above.
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Show notes / Timestamps
00:00 Introduction and the power of information
00:42 Welcome to Atlas Network with Michael Carnuccio
01:04 Conversation with Joe Kent: Grassroot Institute’s mission
02:37 Innovative tools for government transparency
05:17 Success stories and applications of Open Hearings
08:12 Rebuilding after the fires in Lahaina
17:32 Challenges and opportunities in Hawaii’s liberty movement
20:26 Government support and policy impact
22:15 2025 Template Freedom Award nomination
23:21 Partnership with Atlas Network
26:20 Future goals and overcoming challenges
28:35 Personal Reflections and hobbies
35:39 Final thoughts and recommendations
In a subsequent Atlas Network podcast …
Grassroot’s Open Hearings project was mentioned in a subsequent Carnuccio podcast titled “Exploring Innovation in the Freedom Movement,” featuring Lyall Swim, Ph.d., chief innovation officer for the Atlas Network.
At 14 minutes: “Are there tools that we ought to be thinking about and building and problems that we’re in a unique position to solve. So there’s examples of that. The Open Hearings project by Grassroot Institute is one of those.”
At 44 minutes: “If I look at, for example, Joe Kent’s tool and what they [at Grassroot have] developed with AI, … if I’m a small think tank and I’m trying to monitor a hundred different cities and maybe a hundred different government agency meetings and different things happening on a regular bases, the human capital required to use that transparency in a substantive and meaningful way up until where we are with AI, you would have needed dozens of bodies to physically watch it and evaluate what’s going on.
“And now with AI, I can have a team of two people monitor those 200 meetings and using the query, and you know, of the features that we’re now familiar with chat GPT and other tools, Gemini, etc., and what Joe has done, I can go in and with a much smaller team take that transparency work that has been done and now actually make it meaningful in ways I couldn’t before.”