The Workshop Series
Pieces on what AI is, who owns it, and what that means for our classrooms and our communities.
These readings were prepared for the UFT-CWE Chapter, to be read on their own or worked through together before, during, or after the workshop. There is a simple thread running through each of them: AI is a labor question before it is a technical one, and the question that finally matters is not what the machine can do but who owns it. In answering this question, we argue that the coming abundance must be shared abundance, that it must be participatory democratic abundance, one in which the people will be fully engaged in governance at every level of society.
One · The frame
AI in Adult and Worker Education
An introductory reader. Why AI is a labor question, the field of companies building it, prompting as plain instruction rather than secret craft, what it costs and who pays, and what all of it means inside an adult-education classroom.
Read the introductory reader →Two · The argument
Whose AI? Whose Abundance?
The ownership argument in full, told through the figures and movements the argument requires. Where the first reader orients, this one commits: abundance is coming, and the only open question is abundance for whom.
Read the second reader →Three · The news, read closely
That Knife Sharpening Itself Over There — Whose Is It?
June's two big events side by side: Anthropic's own report that the machine has begun to build the machine, and the Sanders bill to hand the public a stake in it. From what "AI building AI" means to the question underneath — is the abundance a check handed down, or a deed held in common?
Read the essay →Companion materials
Questions, or want to join a session? Write to xamyxamu@hotmail.com.