Crafting Participatory Tech Futures: Proposal for a CRAFT (Critiquing and Rethinking Accountability, Fairness, and Transparency) session
Authors/Creators
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Kherroubi Garcia, Ismael
(Contact person)1
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Tollon, Fabio
(Researcher)2
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Butalid, Renjie
(Researcher)3
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Kirkpatrick, Christine
(Researcher)4, 5
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Anshur, Ramla
(Researcher)6
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Wright, Connor
(Researcher)3
- Dewey, Ve (Researcher)7
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Duarte, Tania
(Researcher)6
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Schneider, Juliane
(Researcher)8
- Figueroa, David (Researcher)9
- 1. Kairoi
-
2.
University of Edinburgh
- 3. Montreal AI Ethics Institute
-
4.
San Diego Supercomputer Center
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5.
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
-
6.
We and AI
-
7.
Northeastern University London
-
8.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
- 9. NTEN
Description
“Artificial intelligence” (AI) is often framed as an inevitable force—a future unfolding beyond collective control and concentrated in the hands of a technological elite. But what if AI futures were not something delivered to us, but something we could deliberate, contest, and build together? What if diverse publics could gather to imagine technological futures grounded in real societal and ecological needs, and chart practical pathways toward them?
This session invites participants to affirm imagination as a collective practice. Through expert facilitation and participatory world-building, we will move beyond abstract optimism or dystopian critique, and instead co-define actionable, justice-oriented AI futures.
The session unfolds in three interconnected phases: Discovery, Encounters, and Crafting.
- You can now register to join us during London Data Week (in-person): https://londondataweek.org/ldw26-events/#crafting-participatory-tech-futures
- We are also running the workshop online on July 20th and July 23rd.
- Sign up to receive updates about the broader initiatives here (if you have a Google Account) or here (if you don't).
- We have a Prompts Library, which you can read more about and contribute to here.
Files
20260415_FAccT_Proposal.pdf
Files
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Additional details
References
- Bateson, N. (n.d.) Warm Data, online: https://www.warmdata.life/ [Accessed 14 February 2026]
- Better Images of AI (n.d.) https://betterimagesofai.org/ [Accessed March 15, 2026]
- Bezold, C. & Hancock, T. (1993) An overview of the health futures field, in: Ann T., "Health futures in support of health for all," WHO, Geneva, pp. 69-90, online: https://iris.who.int/server/api/core/bitstreams/364e6a7f-0fa6-405a-9d79- 80cea2215099/content [Accessed February 14, 2026]
- Duarte, T., Kherroubi Garcia, I., Ramla, A., Harriett, H., Dylan, O., & Wright, S. (2025). Resisting, Refusing, Reclaiming, Reimagining: Charting Challenges to Narratives of AI Inevitability. We and AI. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17382120
- Responsible Artificial Intelligence Network (2026) Theory of Change, RAIN, online: https://rain.ngo/our-theory-of-change [Accessed February 14, 2026]
- Sim, K. (2022) I attended the Designing Desirable Futures workshop, Medium, online: https://medium.com/@jayhan/i-attended-the-designing-desirable-futures-workshop- fbed0bcda1ad [Accessed March 4th, 2026]
- Williams, D. (2025) Indigenous approaches to AI governance: data sovereignty, seven- generation thinking, and long-term stewardship. In R. Butalid, C. Wright, & I. Kherroubi Garcia (Eds.), The State of AI Ethics Report (Volume 7). pp. 147-149. Montreal AI Ethics Institute. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17328882. Available at: https://montrealethics.ai/state
- Yolgörmez, C. and Lewis, J.E. (2025) "Reworlding AI Through Future Imaginaries," in P. Hacker (ed.) Oxford Intersections: AI in Society. 1st ed. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/9780198945215.003.0166