The Institute's Accelerator Fellowship Programme present this public panel discussion featuring a range of international experts.

As AI reshapes our worlds, who decides its future—and who gets left behind? Welcome to Cooperative AI, the first global conference on cooperatives and artificial intelligence, staged during the United Nations’ International Year of Cooperatives. Throughout history, societies have grappled with how to balance technology with social equity. In the early 19th century, the Luddites resisted industrial machines—not out of opposition to technology itself, but in protest against how it was used to undermine workers’ livelihoods and concentrate power in the hands of factory owners. A few decades later, the Rochdale Pioneers laid the foundation for cooperative enterprise, offering a model for democratic ownership in a speedily industrializing world. Now, at another turning point, with artificial intelligence advancing in ways that are both pervasive and uneven, this conference asks: Will AI be governed by a few, or can worker-led models inspire its development to serve the many?

The conference aims to highlight work that advances our understanding of the societal embedding of technology and how techniques from algorithms, optimization, and mechanism design, along with insights from the social sciences and humanistic studies, can help improve equity and access to opportunity for underserved communities.