Last year I participated in this course run by Prof. Trebor Scholz from the New School in New York. It’s online, free to attend (apart from a small registration fee), and I found it informative, interesting, and useful, not least in engaging with an international group of people involved or interested in AI with a left/cooperative perspective.
There’s a session later today - June 24 by way of a brief intro: prospective participants can join a live 30-minute orientation on Wednesday, June 24 at 9am EDT (NYC time) — Zoom: https://NewSchool.zoom.us/j/8986200210. It’s not required, but it’s a good way to get questions answered.
and the course proper runs from late August through to December, and is linked to a conference in Bangkok in November.
Blurb: As AI reshapes economies and public life, the dominant model pursues scale and control. It demands ever more data centers, more energy. As infrastructure consolidates, power shifts to tech oligarchs, undermining labor rights, accountability, and ecological care.
Rather than accepting this trajectory as inevitable, this course explores alternative, democratic models for AI. We explore how cooperative principles and solidarity economy values can disrupt Big Tech AI, imagine democratic alternatives, and learn from the people putting them into practice.
EOI form: https://forms.gle/zXadtikEM6atbhAp6