Second round of concurrent sessions
Format: Workshop (45 min)
Speakers: Abhineet Nayyar, Mallory Knodel, Kimberlee Weatherall
How can communities build an AI commons that survives corporate capture and serves actual public needs? This workshop examines three connected tasks: adopting cooperative technologies, sustaining them through collective institutions, and defending them against extraction and enclosure. Drawing on the organizers’ white paper, participants will explore procurement policies favoring cooperative tools, public investment in digital infrastructure, taxation to fund shared resources, affordable compute, antitrust enforcement, and licensing that protects collective knowledge. The discussion asks why openness alone is insufficient, how collaboration across the Global South can move beyond competing claims of national sovereignty, and how commons governance can prevent surveillance and discrimination. Participants will identify practical policy and organizing pathways that support democratic ownership, equitable development, and innovation within planetary boundaries.
Reporter 1: Mallory Knodel
Reporter 2:
Speakers
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Abhineet Nayyar Senior Research and Policy Associate at IT for Change
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Mallory Knodel Cryptographer and public-interest technologist
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Kimberlee Weatherall Professor of Law at the University of Sydney