The Knowledge in This Room

On Think Tanks asked R Street to give the opening keynote at its annual global conference, held last month in Rabat, Morocco. The event brings together think tankers from dozens of countries to compare notes on how our work gets done and where it is under pressure. This year, the theme was trust. Being asked to open the conference reflects how the field sees R Street: as a trusted institution known for rigorous, independent work and for bringing people who disagree into the same room.

At the heart of my presentation was this: In an age of powerful AI, when an LLM can read the literature and write a policy brief in seconds, what are think tanks for? 

We are civil society organizations built to bring evidence into policymaking. Used well, AI can strengthen that evidence base and augment our abilities as think tankers. What it cannot do is stand in for the people who have to weigh what the evidence means in a particular place against what they can live with. That knowledge does not exist when we begin; it is created between people with a real stake in the outcome. The knowledge we need is in this room, and it will be made here.

We live this in our own work. We build coalitions of every kind, from partners who share our values but disagree on how to get somewhere to those who share very little but can agree on one concrete thing worth doing together. Civic Right, Safer From Harm, and Strange Barnfellows are all rooms where people with something real on the line build agreements they can stand behind. While the ability to sit in true disagreement and come out the other side with trust intact is becoming one of the scarcest resources in public life, it is also where R Street does some of its most distinctive work. 

What comes next is the part I find truly energizing: Which of our rooms do we keep as they are, and which do we rebuild so they do more of what only an encounter can do? In other words, what does AI mean for think tanks, and what does it mean for democracy? R Street is building communities of practice to address these questions and test the answers in the rooms where we convene—from the workshops we run with peers to our own Real Solutions Summit.

None of this happens in isolation. It depends on a community of people who believe that the important work of reasoning together across distance and over time still matters. You are part of that community, and I am profoundly thankful for it.

With gratitude,

Erica

P.S. If you would like to be in one of these rooms (or help us build the next one), please write to me directly. I would very much welcome it.

Learn more about Encounter Knowledge.

Read or watch Erica’s full speech.

In case you missed it:

“When Harm Reduction Isn’t Enough,” Mazen Saleh, Senior Policy Director, Healthier Communities 

“The Fable Fiasco: A Bad Idea Applied Badly,” Mark Dalton, Senior Policy Director, Technology and Innovation

“The Next Chapter for Criminal Justice Policy,” Lisel Petis, Policy Director, Criminal Justice and Civil Liberties