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Amy McIsaac, who leads PACE’s language-perception research, joins The Commons in Conversation on LinkedIn next week to offer more advice about using language in the fraught days after the election. Join us on Wednesday, October 30, at 12:30 p.m. ET on LinkedIn. The event is free. Registration is required to watch.

News and other noteworthy items:

• Can artificial intelligence help identify common ground? Google DeepMind researchers trained large-language models as “caucus mediators” to summarize and outline agreement on social or political issues, according to MIT Technology Review. Their study recruited more than 5,700 participants in Britain to consider in small groups questions such as “Should the voting age be lowered to 16?” A.I., they found, better identified areas of consensus than individuals in the group did.
  
• The Carnegie Corporation and Civic Pulse are out with a new survey showing that local governments are much less plagued by polarization than federal or state policymaking. Eighty-seven percent of local government leaders believe polarization is hurting the country, but less than a third see its negative effects in their communities.
  
• Daniel Pink — author of such bestsellers as Free Agent Nation and The Power of Regret — takes stock of the evidence for and against ranked-choice voting in the Washington Post. “Usually my columns offer a full-throated call to action. (Has your city banned left turns yet?),” he writes. “In this case, my view is measured: ‘Why not give ranked-choice voting a try?’”
  
• Tracie Powell, founder of the Pivot Fund, makes the case that “funders need to radically rethink the way they find and fund news organizations” in a column for the Poynter Institute. Powell praises the $500 million Press Forward effort to support local news but says it risks neglecting the “wide range of new ways that people — especially people of color — are getting their news and information, including the multitude of small, hyperlocal news sites that many underserved communities trust to keep them informed.”
  
• A new report from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences argues that the movement to strengthen democracy has focused too much on structure and laws and too little on bolstering the culture by which Americans come together. “We believe it is also time to focus on norms, customs, mores — what Alexis de Tocqueville called ‘habits of the heart’ — and on how to make such habits constructively contagious,” declares the report. Members of the academy working group that produced the report — including Ben Klutsey of the Mercatus Center, Eric Liu of Citizen University, and Natalie Tran of the Creative Artists Agency Foundation — will discuss it at an event, “How to Fortify Civic Culture in America,” on Monday, October 28, at 1 p.m. ET.
  
• The Greater Good Science Center at the University of Berkeley launches next week a “7 Day Campaign for Connection Challenge,” which offers science-based skills to help individuals navigate the divisiveness of the election. Beginning Monday, October 28, participants will receive a daily email with suggestions for how to manage stress and connect with others.