Democratizing Knowledge About AI

Discussion

By R. Trebor Scholz & Mark Esposito:

"At the knowledge level, access to AI alone is insufficient if the tools operate as black boxes that cannot explain or be challenged in their outputs and that are grounded in imposed rather than democratically established values. The solidarity approach responds by reclaiming the knowledge layer as a collectively governed space—one that favors explainability, contestability, shared standards, and deep AI literacy.

AI4Coops in Argentina is a small, exploratory initiative bringing together cooperative practitioners and technologists to consider how artificial intelligence might support cooperative governance and shared learning. It ensures that algorithmic literacy is not confined to elite institutions or concentrated within dominant technology corporations such as Google or Meta, but is instead broadly accessible to workers, cooperatives, and communities.

Meanwhile, the UK-based Animorph Co-op develops augmented-reality tools for dementia care, using immersive storytelling and visual prompts to support memory, communication, and emotional connection for people living with dementia and their caregivers. Because it is worker-owned, it refuses to monetize patient vulnerability, designing tools that prioritize care over engagement metrics.

These examples illustrate that “AI for good” cannot amount to virtue signaling, ethical branding, or forms of greenwashing or co-op-washing. Building the solidarity stack requires that alternative business models are genuinely anchored in workplace democracy, shared ownership, and accountable governance. Importantly, these localized models prioritize linguistic sovereignty and the preservation of cultural information that is often inaccessible or ignored by large-scale, global LLMs.'

(https://ssir.org/articles/entry/artificial-intelligence-solidarity-ecosystem)