A bold idea to replace politicians
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0:01 - 0:03Is it just me,
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0:03 - 0:05or are there other people here
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0:05 - 0:08that are a little bit
disappointed with democracy? -
0:09 - 0:11(Applause)
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0:12 - 0:14So let's look at a few numbers.
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0:15 - 0:17If we look across the world,
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0:17 - 0:21the median turnout
in presidential elections -
0:21 - 0:23over the last 30 years
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0:23 - 0:25has been just 67 percent.
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0:26 - 0:28Now, if we go to Europe
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0:28 - 0:33and we look at people that participated
in EU parliamentary elections, -
0:33 - 0:35the median turnout in those elections
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0:35 - 0:37is just 42 percent.
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0:38 - 0:40Now let's go to New York,
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0:40 - 0:44and let's see how many people voted
in the last election for mayor. -
0:45 - 0:48We will find that only
24 percent of people showed up to vote. -
0:49 - 0:52What that means is that,
if "Friends" was still running, -
0:52 - 0:56Joey and maybe Phoebe
would have shown up to vote. -
0:56 - 0:57(Laughter)
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0:57 - 1:02And you cannot blame them
because people are tired of politicians. -
1:02 - 1:06And people are tired of other people
using the data that they have generated -
1:06 - 1:08to communicate with
their friends and family, -
1:08 - 1:10to target political propaganda at them.
-
1:11 - 1:13But the thing about this
is that this is not new. -
1:13 - 1:16Nowadays, people use likes
to target propaganda at you -
1:17 - 1:20before they use your zip code
or your gender or your age, -
1:20 - 1:23because the idea of targeting people
with propaganda for political purposes -
1:24 - 1:25is as old as politics.
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1:26 - 1:28And the reason why that idea is there
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1:28 - 1:31is because democracy
has a basic vulnerability. -
1:32 - 1:34This is the idea of a representative.
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1:34 - 1:38In principle, democracy is the ability
of people to exert power. -
1:38 - 1:42But in practice, we have to delegate
that power to a representative -
1:42 - 1:44that can exert that power for us.
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1:45 - 1:46That representative is a bottleneck,
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1:46 - 1:48or a weak spot.
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1:48 - 1:52It is the place that you want to target
if you want to attack democracy -
1:52 - 1:55because you can capture democracy
by either capturing that representative -
1:55 - 1:57or capturing the way
that people choose it. -
1:58 - 1:59So the big question is:
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2:00 - 2:01Is this the end of history?
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2:02 - 2:05Is this the best that we can do
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2:06 - 2:09or, actually, are there alternatives?
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2:10 - 2:12Some people have been thinking
about alternatives, -
2:13 - 2:16and one of the ideas that is out there
is the idea of direct democracy. -
2:17 - 2:19This is the idea of bypassing
politicians completely -
2:19 - 2:22and having people vote directly on issues,
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2:22 - 2:24having people vote directly on bills.
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2:24 - 2:26But this idea is naive
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2:26 - 2:29because there's too many things
that we would need to choose. -
2:29 - 2:32If you look at the 114th US Congress,
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2:32 - 2:34you will have seen that
the House of Representatives -
2:34 - 2:37considered more than 6,000 bills,
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2:37 - 2:40the Senate considered
more than 3,000 bills -
2:40 - 2:43and they approved more than 300 laws.
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2:43 - 2:44Those would be many decisions
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2:44 - 2:47that each person would have to make a week
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2:47 - 2:49on topics that they know little about.
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2:49 - 2:52So there's a big cognitive
bandwidth problem -
2:52 - 2:56if we're going to try to think about
direct democracy as a viable alternative. -
2:56 - 3:01So some people think about the idea
of liquid democracy, or fluid democracy, -
3:01 - 3:04which is the idea that you endorse
your political power to someone, -
3:04 - 3:06who can endorse it to someone else,
-
3:06 - 3:09and, eventually, you create
a large follower network -
3:09 - 3:12in which, at the end, there's a few people
that are making decisions -
3:12 - 3:15on behalf of all of their followers
and their followers. -
3:16 - 3:20But this idea also doesn't solve
the problem of the cognitive bandwidth -
3:20 - 3:24and, to be honest, it's also quite similar
to the idea of having a representative. -
3:25 - 3:28So what I'm going to do today is
I'm going to be a little bit provocative, -
3:28 - 3:31and I'm going to ask you, well:
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3:31 - 3:37What if, instead of trying
to bypass politicians, -
3:37 - 3:39we tried to automate them?
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3:46 - 3:49The idea of automation is not new.
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3:49 - 3:51It was started more than 300 years ago,
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3:51 - 3:54when French weavers decided
to automate the loom. -
3:55 - 3:59The winner of that industrial war
was Joseph-Marie Jacquard. -
3:59 - 4:01He was a French weaver and merchant
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4:01 - 4:03that married the loom
with the steam engine -
4:03 - 4:06to create autonomous looms.
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4:06 - 4:08And in those autonomous looms,
he gained control. -
4:08 - 4:12He could now make fabrics that were
more complex and more sophisticated -
4:12 - 4:14than the ones they
were able to do by hand. -
4:15 - 4:18But also, by winning that industrial war,
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4:18 - 4:21he laid out what has become
the blueprint of automation. -
4:22 - 4:25The way that we automate things
for the last 300 years -
4:25 - 4:26has always been the same:
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4:27 - 4:30we first identify a need,
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4:30 - 4:33then we create a tool
to satisfy that need, -
4:33 - 4:35like the loom, in this case,
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4:35 - 4:37and then we study how people use that tool
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4:37 - 4:39to automate that user.
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4:39 - 4:42That's how we came
from the mechanical loom -
4:42 - 4:44to the autonomous loom,
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4:44 - 4:46and that took us a thousand years.
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4:46 - 4:48Now, it's taken us only a hundred years
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4:48 - 4:52to use the same script
to automate the car. -
4:53 - 4:56But the thing is that, this time around,
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4:56 - 4:58automation is kind of for real.
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4:58 - 5:01This is a video that a colleague of mine
from Toshiba shared with me -
5:01 - 5:05that shows the factory
that manufactures solid state drives. -
5:05 - 5:07The entire factory is a robot.
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5:07 - 5:09There are no humans in that factory.
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5:09 - 5:11And the robots are soon
to leave the factories -
5:11 - 5:13and become part of our world,
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5:13 - 5:15become part of our workforce.
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5:15 - 5:17So what I do in my day job
-
5:17 - 5:21is actually create tools that integrate
data for entire countries -
5:21 - 5:24so that we can ultimately have
the foundations that we need -
5:24 - 5:28for a future in which we need
to also manage those machines. -
5:29 - 5:32But today, I'm not here
to talk to you about these tools -
5:32 - 5:34that integrate data for countries.
-
5:34 - 5:37But I'm here to talk to you
about another idea -
5:37 - 5:42that might help us think about how to use
artificial intelligence in democracy. -
5:42 - 5:47Because the tools that I build
are designed for executive decisions. -
5:47 - 5:51These are decisions that can be cast
in some sort of term of objectivity -- -
5:51 - 5:52public investment decisions.
-
5:53 - 5:56But there are decisions
that are legislative, -
5:56 - 5:59and these decisions that are legislative
require communication among people -
5:59 - 6:01that have different points of view,
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6:01 - 6:04require participation, require debate,
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6:04 - 6:05require deliberation.
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6:06 - 6:09And for a long time,
we have thought that, well, -
6:09 - 6:13what we need to improve democracy
is actually more communication. -
6:13 - 6:16So all of the technologies that we have
advanced in the context of democracy, -
6:16 - 6:19whether they are newspapers
or whether it is social media, -
6:19 - 6:21have tried to provide us
with more communication. -
6:22 - 6:24But we've been down that rabbit hole,
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6:24 - 6:27and we know that's not
what's going to solve the problem. -
6:27 - 6:29Because it's not a communication problem,
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6:29 - 6:30it's a cognitive bandwidth problem.
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6:31 - 6:33So if the problem is one
of cognitive bandwidth, -
6:33 - 6:35well, adding more communication to people
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6:36 - 6:38is not going to be
what's going to solve it. -
6:38 - 6:41What we are going to need instead
is to have other technologies -
6:41 - 6:44that help us deal with
some of the communication -
6:44 - 6:47that we are overloaded with.
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6:47 - 6:48Think of, like, a little avatar,
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6:48 - 6:50a software agent,
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6:50 - 6:52a digital Jiminy Cricket --
-
6:52 - 6:53(Laughter)
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6:53 - 6:57that basically is able
to answer things on your behalf. -
6:58 - 7:00And if we had that technology,
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7:00 - 7:02we would be able to offload
some of the communication -
7:02 - 7:06and help, maybe, make better decisions
or decisions at a larger scale. -
7:07 - 7:11And the thing is that the idea
of software agents is also not new. -
7:11 - 7:13We already use them all the time.
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7:13 - 7:15We use software agents
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7:15 - 7:18to choose the way that we're going
to drive to a certain location, -
7:19 - 7:21the music that we're going to listen to
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7:22 - 7:25or to get suggestions
for the next books that we should read. -
7:26 - 7:29So there is an obvious idea
in the 21st century -
7:29 - 7:31that was as obvious as the idea
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7:31 - 7:37of putting together a steam engine
with a loom at the time of Jacquard. -
7:38 - 7:42And that idea is combining
direct democracy with software agents. -
7:43 - 7:45Imagine, for a second, a world
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7:45 - 7:48in which, instead of having
a representative that represents you -
7:48 - 7:50and millions of other people,
-
7:50 - 7:53you can have a representative
that represents only you, -
7:54 - 7:56with your nuanced political views --
-
7:56 - 7:59that weird combination
of libertarian and liberal -
7:59 - 8:02and maybe a little bit
conservative on some issues -
8:02 - 8:04and maybe very progressive on others.
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8:04 - 8:07Politicians nowadays are packages,
and they're full of compromises. -
8:07 - 8:11But you might have someone
that can represent only you, -
8:11 - 8:12if you are willing to give up the idea
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8:13 - 8:15that that representative is a human.
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8:15 - 8:17If that representative
is a software agent, -
8:17 - 8:22we could have a senate that has
as many senators as we have citizens. -
8:22 - 8:24And those senators are going to be able
to read every bill -
8:24 - 8:27and they're going to be able
to vote on each one of them. -
8:28 - 8:31So there's an obvious idea
that maybe we want to consider. -
8:31 - 8:33But I understand that in this day and age,
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8:33 - 8:35this idea might be quite scary.
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8:36 - 8:40In fact, thinking of a robot
coming from the future -
8:40 - 8:42to help us run our governments
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8:42 - 8:43sounds terrifying.
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8:44 - 8:46But we've been there before.
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8:46 - 8:47(Laughter)
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8:47 - 8:50And actually he was quite a nice guy.
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8:52 - 8:58So what would the Jacquard loom
version of this idea look like? -
8:58 - 9:00It would be a very simple system.
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9:00 - 9:04Imagine a system that you log in
and you create your avatar, -
9:04 - 9:06and then you're going
to start training your avatar. -
9:06 - 9:09So you can provide your avatar
with your reading habits, -
9:09 - 9:11or connect it to your social media,
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9:11 - 9:13or you can connect it to other data,
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9:13 - 9:15for example by taking
psychological tests. -
9:15 - 9:18And the nice thing about this
is that there's no deception. -
9:18 - 9:22You are not providing data to communicate
with your friends and family -
9:22 - 9:25that then gets used in a political system.
-
9:25 - 9:29You are providing data to a system
that is designed to be used -
9:29 - 9:31to make political decisions
on your behalf. -
9:31 - 9:35Then you take that data and you choose
a training algorithm, -
9:35 - 9:37because it's an open marketplace
-
9:37 - 9:40in which different people
can submit different algorithms -
9:40 - 9:44to predict how you're going to vote,
based on the data you have provided. -
9:44 - 9:48And the system is open,
so nobody controls the algorithms; -
9:48 - 9:50there are algorithms
that become more popular -
9:50 - 9:51and others that become less popular.
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9:51 - 9:53Eventually, you can audit the system.
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9:53 - 9:55You can see how your avatar is working.
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9:55 - 9:57If you like it,
you can leave it on autopilot. -
9:57 - 9:59If you want to be
a little more controlling, -
9:59 - 10:01you can actually choose that they ask you
-
10:01 - 10:04every time they're going
to make a decision, -
10:04 - 10:05or you can be anywhere in between.
-
10:05 - 10:08One of the reasons
why we use democracy so little -
10:08 - 10:11may be because democracy
has a very bad user interface. -
10:11 - 10:14And if we improve the user
interface of democracy, -
10:14 - 10:16we might be able to use it more.
-
10:16 - 10:20Of course, there's a lot of questions
that you might have. -
10:20 - 10:23Well, how do you train these avatars?
-
10:23 - 10:25How do you keep the data secure?
-
10:25 - 10:28How do you keep the systems
distributed and auditable? -
10:28 - 10:30How about my grandmother,
who's 80 years old -
10:30 - 10:32and doesn't know how to use the internet?
-
10:32 - 10:34Trust me, I've heard them all.
-
10:35 - 10:39So when you think about an idea like this,
you have to beware of pessimists -
10:39 - 10:43because they are known to have
a problem for every solution. -
10:43 - 10:45(Laughter)
-
10:45 - 10:48So I want to invite you to think
about the bigger ideas. -
10:48 - 10:52The questions I just showed you
are little ideas -
10:52 - 10:55because they are questions
about how this would not work. -
10:56 - 10:57The big ideas are ideas of:
-
10:58 - 10:59What else can you do with this
-
10:59 - 11:01if this would happen to work?
-
11:02 - 11:05And one of those ideas is,
well, who writes the laws? -
11:06 - 11:10In the beginning, we could have
the avatars that we already have, -
11:10 - 11:14voting on laws that are written
by the senators or politicians -
11:14 - 11:15that we already have.
-
11:15 - 11:17But if this were to work,
-
11:18 - 11:20you could write an algorithm
-
11:20 - 11:22that could try to write a law
-
11:22 - 11:25that would get a certain
percentage of approval, -
11:25 - 11:27and you could reverse the process.
-
11:27 - 11:30Now, you might think that this idea
is ludicrous and we should not do it, -
11:30 - 11:33but you cannot deny that it's an idea
that is only possible -
11:33 - 11:36in a world in which direct democracy
and software agents -
11:36 - 11:39are a viable form of participation.
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11:41 - 11:43So how do we start the revolution?
-
11:44 - 11:48We don't start this revolution
with picket fences or protests -
11:48 - 11:52or by demanding our current politicians
to be changed into robots. -
11:52 - 11:53That's not going to work.
-
11:53 - 11:55This is much more simple,
-
11:55 - 11:56much slower
-
11:56 - 11:58and much more humble.
-
11:58 - 12:02We start this revolution by creating
simple systems like this in grad schools, -
12:02 - 12:04in libraries, in nonprofits.
-
12:04 - 12:07And we try to figure out
all of those little questions -
12:07 - 12:08and those little problems
-
12:08 - 12:12that we're going to have to figure out
to make this idea something viable, -
12:12 - 12:14to make this idea something
that we can trust. -
12:14 - 12:18And as we create those systems that have
a hundred people, a thousand people, -
12:18 - 12:22a hundred thousand people voting
in ways that are not politically binding, -
12:22 - 12:24we're going to develop trust in this idea,
-
12:24 - 12:25the world is going to change,
-
12:25 - 12:28and those that are as little
as my daughter is right now -
12:28 - 12:30are going to grow up.
-
12:31 - 12:33And by the time my daughter is my age,
-
12:33 - 12:37maybe this idea, that I know
today is very crazy, -
12:37 - 12:42might not be crazy to her
and to her friends. -
12:42 - 12:44And at that point,
-
12:44 - 12:46we will be at the end of our history,
-
12:46 - 12:49but they will be
at the beginning of theirs. -
12:50 - 12:51Thank you.
-
12:51 - 12:54(Applause)
- Title:
- A bold idea to replace politicians
- Speaker:
- César Hidalgo
- Description:
-
César Hidalgo has a radical suggestion for fixing our broken political system: automate it! In this provocative talk, he outlines a bold idea to bypass politicians by empowering citizens to create personalized AI representatives that participate directly in democratic decisions. Explore a new way to make collective decisions and expand your understanding of democracy.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 13:08
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for A bold idea to replace politicians | ||
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for A bold idea to replace politicians | ||
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for A bold idea to replace politicians | ||
Oliver Friedman approved English subtitles for A bold idea to replace politicians | ||
Oliver Friedman edited English subtitles for A bold idea to replace politicians | ||
Camille Martínez accepted English subtitles for A bold idea to replace politicians | ||
Camille Martínez edited English subtitles for A bold idea to replace politicians | ||
Camille Martínez edited English subtitles for A bold idea to replace politicians |