This two-day workshop explores alternative frontiers of participation in AI governance, with a specific focus on their interplay with and potential for EU institutional design. It fosters debates to discuss and expand participatory experiences in novel and crosscutting ways to AI governance and to assess the interplay of rules and institutionalised practices with bottom-up, grassroots initiatives.
Widely across disciplines and policy domains, many scholars have turned their attention to the role of social norms and grassroots mobilisation as forms of counter-power capable of challenging (top-down) governance. These dynamics are now manifesting more broadly across a wide swathe of domains of European AI law and regulation, such as standardisation, GPAI code of practice drafting and (AI) data governance. Much as widespread rhetorical commitments are made to stakeholder participation and engagement, meaningful involvement for civil society organisations (representing the real needs and priorities of those most affected by AI systems) and other (unorganised) ‘affected publics’ (by AI) is still hovering at the margins of current debates on European AI governance.
This two-day workshop explores alternative frontiers of participation in (EU) AI law and governance, with a specific focus on their interplay with and potential for EU institutional design. It aims to discuss participatory experiences in novel and crosscutting ways and to assess the interplay of existing rules and institutionalised practices with bottom-up, grassroots initiatives. Even more fundamentally, it turns the spotlight on understanding the tension between top-down approaches to participation, which is often characterised by stakeholderism, and bottom-up efforts by civil society organisations, social movements and affected communities to claim space and visibility in AI governance.
In doing so, the workshop brings together an interdisciplinary scholarship working on AI, data governance and civil society participation in four thematic roundtables with a view to, amongst other things:
- assessing how civil society participation currently occurs across current themes in EU AI law and regulation, including AI standardisation, GPAI code of practice drafting and (AI) data governance;
- exploring how civil society organisations and wider ‘affected publics’ articulate (counter-)norms, priorities and democratic involvement;
- examining how institutionalised forms of civil society participation interact with and/or constrain bottom-up mobilisation;
- reflecting on strategies to make grassroots initiatives more visible and meaningful without losing their critical edge.
In line with broader struggles over transparency, accountability and power, the workshop wants to move beyond thin notions of engagement and towards more meaningful and radical democratic imaginaries for civil society participation in (EU) AI regulation.
Please note that the workshop is by invitation only. If you wish to participate, please contact the workshop organisers at deirdre.curtin@eui.eu and t.fia@ucl.ac.uk.