Options for a Global Citizens Assembly on AI
A policy and practice design lab
The UN High Level Advisory Board on Artificial Intelligence is calling for new institutional arrangements to support the governance of AI that can deliver against the principle that AI should be governed “for all, by all”.
In parallel, the Coalition for a Global Citizens Assembly have launched plans for a permanent Global Citizens’ Assembly, to address humanity’s greatest challenges.
How could a Global Citizens Assembly on AI work? That’s the question we’re setting out to explore, producing an options paper to be shared alongside the UN Summit of the Future in September 2024.
Get involved
Between May and July 2024 we’ve carrying out a series of interviews, focus groups and workshops to explore:
- AI governance issues that a global citizens assembly could address;
- Design options for an inclusive global assembly including if and how emerging technologies can be used to support the process;
- Institutional structures and touch-points including possible organisational models and relationships for an assembly;
- Strategic choices and theories of change to ensure that an assembly gives citizens and communities a powerful voice in the governance of data and AI.
At the end of July we shared and discussed a draft options paper.
Over August we are inviting further feedback and running workshop sessions.
If you would like to get more involved, please respond to our brief sign-up survey here, and we will be in touch.
About the team
This is a collaborative process hosted by Connected by Data, working in partnership with ISWE Foundation. It is organised as a design lab under our Growing Data Governance Communities grant from The Omidyar Network.
This project is being coordinated by Tim Davies and Claire Mellier.
Events
We’re joining forces with Jed Miller of 3 Bridges and the Accountability Lab team to host a discussing in Washington, DC on Tuesday, September 24 at 4 PM ET on the potential and the practicalities of bringing citizen voices from across the globe into AI governance, building on our Options for a Global Citizens Assembly on AI work.
We will be sharing outputs from our design lab on options for a global citizens assembly on AI at TechSalon New York, ahead of the Civil Society Days of the UN Summit of the Future.
Join us for this interactive online workshop on Options for a Global Citizens Assembly on AI.
A Permanent Global Citizens’ Assembly: Options for an AI Focus
On 18th July 2024 we co-hosted a workshop at the “A Permanent Global Citizens’ Assembly: bringing humankind’s voice to world politics” conference at Jesus College Oxford exploring an early draft of our Options for a Global Citizens Assembly on AI paper.
Tim led a workshop session at the University of Westminister Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) conference ‘Regulating Digital Media in the Global South’ exploring different approaches to embedding public voice in data and AI governance.
As part of our design lab scoping options for a Global Citizens’ Assembly on AI (GCA on AI), Tim attended the launch of the findings from the Belgian Citizens Panel on AI at the Residence Palace in Brussels.
The Belgian Citizens Panel was composed of 60 randomly selected citizens invited to take part in three weekends of learning and deliberation in the first part of 2024 on question around the evolution of artificial intelligence in Europe. The Panel was organized as part of the Belgian presidency of the European Union, and was the first time a citizens assembly has been organized in this context.
On 24th May we organized a workshop in Brussels to explore design options for an inclusive global assembly addressing AI, as part of our design lab building off the Global Citizen Assembly Coalitions challenge paper.
Weeknotes
Weeknotes are a combination of updates and personal reflection written on a routine basis