CONCEPT
Counter-Institutions for AI
The organizational forms — worker cooperatives, data trusts, algorithmic audits, civic AI — that resist metabolization by operating according to different grammars of worth.
Counter-institutions for AI name the organizational forms that might resist the metabolization of AI-era critique by building arrangements that operate according to different grammars of worth than those of the projective city. They include worker cooperatives that own AI tools collectively, data trusts that govern training data on behalf of contributors, algorithmic audits conducted by independent civic bodies, publicly-owned compute infrastructure, and the nascent forms of union organization adapted to AI-mediated work. What distinguishes them from the absorbed AI ethics industry is that they do not ask how existing firms should use AI better; they ask who should own and govern AI in the first place.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The counter-institutional project emerges from the recognition that individual adaptation and organizational reform within existing firms cannot address the structural problems of the AI transition. If the distribution of AI-driven surplus depends on the ownership structure of AI infrastructure, then redistribution requires changing that structure. If the evaluation of AI-mediated work depends on tests administered