In this session, we explored how AI is reshaping governance and enabling authoritarian practices. Political leaders are increasingly leveraging digital tools to surveil and control their citizens, while private sector companies are seizing more and more decision-making power over consequential political issues. Meanwhile, emerging technologies are being integrated into life-and-death government powers, such as public service delivery, policing, and warfare.

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In this session, we explored how the rise of consumer-facing AI tools, coupled with a lack of public funding, has pressured schools and colleges to adopt technology as a substitute for essential resources.

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This session focused on what political tools are available to us, what we have learned from policy making efforts thus far, and how to prevent AI policy from being a game of the powerful rather than a meaningful step to protecting peoples’ rights.

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This insight session explored the ways in which AI narrative frames are constructed and who they benefit. Our speakers shared actionable insights on how we can shift the narrative landscape to favour a rights-centred, pragmatic uptake of emerging technologies.

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This session focused on the environmental costs of AI infrastructure and the global resistance to data centers. We covered the ongoing legal battles where local communities are working to prevent the development of data centers — which require large amounts of water and electricity — in areas that already struggle with drought and other forms of environmental degradation. We also explored how AI infrastructure is politicised, and how AI hype is used as a springboard for colonial powers to exploit areas of the world that contain the precious minerals needed to build hardware.

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There are dozens of elections in 2024 and little sense of how generative AI will impact them from context to context. This session will explore the questions funders should be considering: In what ways will democratic governance be impacted by AI? What have we learned about the role of AI in the electoral process globally in the first half of this historic election year? What role will AI play in campaigning, election administration, and the information environments during and after elections? How will the impact of AI on elections change the material conditions for communities around the world? This was an in-person learning lab at MozFest in Amsterdam.

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Our first Learning Lab was Thursday the 23rd of May (8am PDT | 11am EDT | 6pm EAT/GMT) and focused on the AI Supply Chain & Labour. In this session we illustrated how tech companies obfuscate human labour, and lead consumers to believe that it’s all AI and automation.

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