AI Commons
AI Commons: nourishing alternatives to Big Tech monoculture
By Joana Varon, Sasha Costanza-Chock, Mariana Tamari, Berhan Taye, and Vanessa Koetz
‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI) has become a buzzword, with tech companies, research institutions, and governments all vying to define and shape its future. How can we escape the current context of AI development where powerful forces are pushing for models that, ultimately, automate inequalities and threaten socio-environmental diversity? What if we could redefine AI? What if we could shift the production of AI systems away from the hegemonic capitalist model towards more disruptive, inclusive, and decentralized models? Can we imagine and foster an AI Commons ecosystem that challenges the dominant logic of an ‘AI arms race?’ An ecosystem that might encompass researchers, developers, and activists who are thinking about AI from decolonial, transfeminist, antiracist, indigenous, decentralized, post-capitalist and/or socio-environmental justice perspectives?
This field scan, commissioned by One Project and conducted by Coding Rights, aims to understand the (possibly) emerging “AI Commons” ecosystem. The authors identify 234 key entities (organizations, cooperatives and collectives, networks, companies, projects, and others) from Africa, the Americas, and Europe that are building various components of alternative possible AI futures – potential seeds of an AI Commons ecosystem. The report identifies nascent but powerful communities of practice that already produce nuanced criticism of the Big Tech-driven AI development ecosystem, while they also imagine, develop, and, at times, deploy AI systems informed and guided by commitments to decoloniality, feminism, antiracism, and post-capitalism.