Format: Structured Dialogue (40 min)
Speakers: Urs Gasser, Morshed Mannan
This conversation asks what cooperatives might contribute to AI beyond owning particular tools or building platform cooperatives. Morshed Mannan looks at the cooperative movement as a source of new institutions for data stewardship, shared standards, alliances, and participation in shaping the AI supply chain. Urs Gasser widens the frame from AI governance to decision governance and asks how institutions can make sound decisions when goals are contested, information is incomplete, and the right instruments are uncertain. Their exchange focuses on autonomy, institutional learning, and experimentation: whether cooperatives can draw on forms of knowledge and expertise that are often excluded from conventional AI development, remain sensitive to changing circumstances, and preserve meaningful human judgment. At the same time, they confront the practical limits of this promise, including black-box systems, explanation fatigue, uneven participation, and the problem of democratic control when cooperatives rely on technologies they cannot fully inspect or alter.
Reporter 1: Urs Gasser
Reporter 2: Morshed Mannan
Speakers
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Urs Gasser Professor of Public Policy, Governance, and Innovative Technology at the Technical University of Munich
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Morshed Mannan Lecturer in Global Law and Digital Technologies at Edinburgh Law School, University of Edinburgh