AI Workers, Geopolitics, and Algorithmic Collective Action

TL;DR

This paper argues that AI workers are key agents in geopolitics and collective action, emphasizing bottom-up governance and participatory design to promote responsible AI development.

Contribution

It introduces the idea of AI workers as geopolitical actors and advocates for engaging them through participatory design to foster responsible AI and collective action.

Findings

AI workers can influence AI governance and geopolitics.

Participatory Design empowers AI workers as agents of change.

Bottom-up interventions can complement traditional governance.

Abstract

According to the theory of International Political Economy (IPE), states are often incentivized to rely on rather than constrain powerful corporations. For this reason, IPE provides a useful lens to explain why efforts to govern Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the international and national levels have thus far been developed, applied, and enforced unevenly. Building on recent work that explores how AI companies engage in geopolitics, this position paper argues that some AI workers can be considered actors of geopolitics. It makes the timely case that governance alone cannot ensure responsible, ethical, or robust AI development and use, and greater attention should be paid to bottom-up interventions at the site of AI development. AI workers themselves should be situated as individual agents of change, especially when considering their potential to foster Algorithmic Collective Action (ACA). Drawing on methods of Participatory Design (PD), this paper proposes engaging AI workers as sources of knowledge, relative power, and intentionality to encourage more responsible and just AI development and create the conditions that can facilitate ACA.