<aside> âšī¸ This presentation at PAIRS 2026 Online on 17th February 2026 09:45 UTC. Registered participants will receive zoom links to join the session via e-mail.
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Discourses of participatory AI often presume that inclusion within existing sociotechnical systems constitutes empowerment. Yet such framings risk neutralising dissent and foreclosing alternative imaginaries of technology by treating participation as merely consultation, rather than one where power can and should be redistributed.
This paper interrogates participation as a site of negotiation and struggle by reflecting on the work of different communities that are contesting the logics and infrastructures that are shaping AI. Drawing on decolonial theory and critical data justice scholarship, it analyses how participation can be mobilised across contexts by examining how the production of knowledge and the terms of partnerships can lead to resistance and re-worlding.
Community-led and activist practices ranging from data governance collectives, digital rights litigators, creative and speculative artists, demonstrate how participation can be repurposed as a form of epistemic and political counter-power. These practices unsettle the universalist assumptions of dominant forms of participatory AI by foregrounding situated knowledges, collective autonomy, and alternative value systems. In doing so, such practices question where AI development is located, how governance institutions are influenced, and how inequality is sustained through the capture of technical and governance processes by corporate entities.
The paper argues that the politics of participation in AI must be understood as an ongoing negotiation over authority and futurity. Rather than a procedural mechanism of governance, participation operates as a terrain where the boundaries of technological legitimacy are disputed. Centring community perspectives and lived experiences reveals how acts of refusal and contestation expand the horizons of participatory practice â transforming AI from a domain of compliance into one of critical imagination and collective world-making.