GCRD’s Knowledge Encoder Advances to Prototyping Phase of the Global Trust Challenge
The Global Centre for Rehumanising Democracy (GCRD) has been selected to advance to the Prototyping Phase of the Global Trust Challenge for its submission, the Community Knowledge Encoder: Civic Infrastructure for Trustworthy AI Through Community-Grounded Intelligence.
The Global Trust Challenge was created by a global coalition in response to a G7 call to action to strengthen trust in the digital age. With UNESCO as a founding member, the initiative is led by a coalition including the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and AI Commons, working alongside a growing international network of experts, institutions, and organizations.
The selection follows a highly competitive global call for ideas addressing trust, information integrity, and the future of digital ecosystems in the age of AI. The Global Trust Challenge supports innovative approaches that combine policy, technology, and civic imagination to strengthen trust and resilience in digital information environments.
GCRD’s proposed Community Knowledge Encoder is designed as a civic infrastructure tool for trustworthy AI. It aims to help communities encode local knowledge, lived experience, democratic values, and public reasoning into forms that can inform more accountable AI systems. The project responds to a growing challenge in the AI era: how to ensure that intelligent systems are not only technically capable but also grounded in the communities they affect.
“This is an important milestone for GCRD. The age of AI demands more than technical innovation. It requires civic infrastructure that can help us preserve trust, dignity, and democratic agency. Community Knowledge Encoder is our contribution to that challenge, using AI for the common good.”
At the heart of the proposal is the belief that trust cannot be engineered from the top down. It must be built through participation, legitimacy, and the inclusion of community knowledge. The Community Knowledge Encoder seeks to create a structured way for communities, institutions, and researchers to contribute to the knowledge foundations of AI systems, particularly in contexts where public trust, democratic agency, and information integrity are under pressure.
“This is an important milestone for GCRD,” said Dr Margee Ensign, Chair of the GCRD Board. “The age of AI demands more than technical innovation. It requires civic infrastructure that can help us preserve trust, dignity, and democratic agency. Community Knowledge Encoder is our contribution to that challenge, using AI for the common good.”
The Prototyping Phase will give advancing teams the opportunity to further develop their proposals into working prototypes as part of the Global Trust Challenge process. GCRD has confirmed its participation and will now work to develop the Community Knowledge Encoder from concept into a practical tool for community-grounded intelligence.
The selection builds on GCRD’s wider work at the intersection of democracy, public discourse, AI, and civic trust. Through initiatives such as the Democracy Discourse Index, GCRD has been developing new methodologies for understanding the quality of democratic conversation and the conditions under which societies can rebuild trust. The Community Knowledge Encoder extends this mission into trustworthy AI.
