An Update from Global Fund for a New Economy's Inaugural Convening on the Political Economy of AI

In June, the Global Fund for a New Economy’s inaugural convening brought together a transnational and multi-disciplinary group of nearly one hundred scholars, advocates, organizers, and technologists to explore the global political economy of AI and digital technologies. As these technologies radically reshape our society and economy, there is a critical need for grounding in a global analysis of the sector’s concentrated power and a concrete vision of how they can be reoriented to serve the public interest and the common good. The convening allowed participants to conspire across issue areas and geography -? from political economists from Egypt with labor organizers from Kenya, labor market researchers from Egypt with anti-trust advocates from the EU, to digital rights campaigners from Brazil and Indonesia with trade activists in the US, laying the foundation for and developing the relationships and connective tissue that we hope will bloom into collaborations. With strong representation from the Global Majority, the aperture of the conversation was wide and focused on the need for regional, transnational, and locally contextualized coordination.

The presentations, lively discussions, and breakouts focused on three main topics:

• How market concentration is playing out across the AI and the digital technology stack, with particular attention to the capture and monetizing of public infrastructure, Big Tech’s unprecedented lobbying power, and the opportunities and challenges of deploying antitrust tools given the shifting political context.
• The implications for workers as the deployment of technologies reshape labor markets and undermines workers’ rights, conditions, and opportunities for interventions in the digital supply chain itself, as well as how labor can exert its power as a countervailing force in service of the common good.
• The options for non-monopolistic, democratic alternatives for AI and digital infrastructure and the ownership and governance of data and knowledge, acknowledging the vastly different political and resource contexts across the Global Majority.

We emerged with a list of potential interventions and collaborations, which we will share soon, along with a full report from the gathering.

We are grateful to Andrea Dehlendorf, Anita Gurumurthy from IT for Change, Amba Kak from AI Now, Sofia Scasserra from TNI, and Francesca Bria, who played key roles in shaping the agenda and framing the conversation. Thanks to all who joined and to panelists Minister Marsha Caddle of Government of Barbados , Margarida Silva from SOMO, Max von Thun from Open Markets Institute, Nerima Wako from Siasa Place, Nagla Rizk from the Access to Knowledge Development Center at the American University in Cairo, Nick Rudikoff from UNI Global, Joana Varon from Coding Rights, Ekaitz Cancela from the Syllabus, and Renata Avila from Open Knowledge. And to the event funders, including Mike Kubzanksy from the Omidyar Network, and the Ford Foundation.