[Air-L] Call for participants and speakers for AI Commons workshop - Dec. 6

[Fenwick Mckelvey]

Please circulate widely.

On 6 December 2019, we are hosting a workshop on an AI Commons at the
Milieux Institute at Concordia University. We invite people from diverse
professions and communities to contribute as either a workshop participant
or a speaker. The workshop seeks to develop a vision for a commons-based
approach to the future of AI. It is an intervention to develop democratic
approaches to digital disruption and understand transformations in citizen
engagement. The workshop will produce a public report on the possibility of
an AI as well as a series of video interviews capturing the discussion.

Please see details below or visit to read more and apply:
https://machineagencies.org/events/aicommons-cfp/
AI Commons Workshop

*Imagining an AI Commons: A One-Day Workshop on AI and the Commons*

6 December 2019

Montreal, Quebec

*Hosted at Machine Agencies, Milieux Institute, Concordia University*

(Please find the submission form
<https://machineagencies.org/events/aicommons-cfp/#gotoform> below)

How can artificial intelligence be oriented toward the common good? The
belief in AI for good has widespread acceptance in the industry and among
governments. Declarations from around the globe—Canada, China, South Korea,
France, and more
<https://medium.com/politics-ai/an-overview-of-national-ai-strategies-2a70ec6edfd>—call
for the development of AI to have a social purpose. But what is that
purpose?

The workshop seeks to develop a vision for a commons-based approach to the
future of AI. It is an intervention to develop democratic approaches to
digital disruption and understand transformations in citizen
engagement. The workshop will produce a public report on the possibility of
an AI as well as a series of video interviews capturing the discussion.

Without clear direction, AI risks becoming privatized and at odds with a
common world. In a recent study, researchers calculated the costs of
training a deep neural network model for use in natural language
processing. Their findings are alarming. The energy required can result in
CO2 emissions equal to the lifetime emissions of five cars. Meanwhile, the
financial cost of the computing needed to carry out this research has
become so high that academic researchers cannot participate, enclosing AI
innovation within the profit-oriented technology industry.

A commons approach to AI seeks to mitigate these harms, just as commons
approaches in other areas have intervened in environmental devastation and
the privatization and commodification of knowledge. The term “commons” was
initially rooted in theories about the conditions and consequences of
sharing resources. But theorists and activists have worked to broaden it,
naming new commons in order to advocate for their protection while
developing praxis to govern them. This shift in understanding has been
greatly informed by indigenous scholarship and indigenous people’s
histories, epistemologies, and practices, which offer a wealth of
approaches to the management and preservation of common resources, material
and otherwise.

In this workshop, we invite you to reflect broadly on artificial
intelligence and its relation to the commons as you consider the following
questions:

   1. What should an AI Commons be?
      1. How could a commons-based approach guide the development of AI?
      2. How does a commons approach differ from proposed ethical or
      rights-based frameworks?
   2. How could the development of AI today—including the infrastructure
   and knowledge at its foundation—become a commons?
      1. What forms of collective action and governance would be necessary?
      What movements and efforts already exist?
      2. What latent commons or undercommons might we find in thinking
      about AI?
   3. Could AI reshape how we think about the commons, leading to new
   theories or practices?
      1. How might related (or unrelated) approaches to the commons be
      understood through AI and the commons (e.g., making kin, new materialism,
      infrastructures of care, or platform cooperativism)?
      2. What histories and instances of the commons does an AI commons
      require for context and inspiration?
   4. How might we imagine a future common world for the machines,
   environments, humans, and other life drawn together by the industrial
   efforts around AI?
      1. How can humans, AI, and other agents collaborate equitably in
      these commons?
      2. How might AI reproduce sustainably within the natural commons,
      unseating extractive and settler approaches to common worlds?

We invite people from diverse professions and communities to contribute as
either a workshop participant or a speaker. Participants are expected to
prepare a short 500-word position statement on one of these questions to be
shared before the workshop then workshopped in groups to draft a shared
response to these questions to be integrated into a public position paper.
Speakers are expected to prepare a short 15-minute presentation,
participate in a roundtable and animate around 1-2 of these questions.

The workshop is invite only. Some travel funds will be available for
speakers.

Please apply at: https://machineagencies.org/events/aicommons-cfp/

*This workshop is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada, the Center for the Study of Democratic Citizenship and
the Milieux Institute for Arts + Technology at Concordia University.*