Hi RadxChanger,
Lots of people feel that the times are getting away from us. That what is happening to the economy, to politics, to culture, is confusing, accelerating, and out of our control. AI is one of the big reasons why. The technology will affect peoples’ lives and our social fabric for the foreseeable future, yet besides the technologists building it, few people understand their role in the system or how they can meaningfully participate in shaping its future.
This year RadicalxChange is focused on changing this. We’re building concrete pilots that demonstrate the importance of human contributions to AI and that shape its economic and cultural impacts.
To this end, we have launched an exciting collaboration with OpenMined, a leading developer of machine learning and privacy-focused data sharing tools, to preserve a marketplace for high-quality information in the AI economy. Starting with the publishing industry, we’re empowering them to manage AI training on their content collectively, instead of individual providers offering their data on a fragmented basis.
We call this “federated data bargaining” and we’ve begun prototyping it with several media partners. As you can see in the screenshots below, a simple Wordpress plugin that OpenMined has built allows media producers to easily join the network and delegate management of third-party access through a RAG to a trusted intermediary, such as a trade association or even RadicalxChange.
We have big hopes for this pilot. We think it can become the definitive framework for AI access to protected content, setting a template for many industries to follow in order to retain lasting economic traction in the age of AI.
But we have to move fast. We’re competing with venture-backed startups that want to put all of this behind a walled garden, and eventually get acquired by Big Tech. Success will require putting together major sectoral-scale partnerships that keep power in the hands of content providers, consumers, and other originators of important formation.
So you can expect to hear lots more about this over the coming months. In the meantime, please do reach out if you are connected with any news media organizations, or other data-holders, or any lawyers, regulators or funders, who might be interested in this pilot program. Thanks!
The first beta cycle of Fairclouds is now live!
Fairclouds is a project designed to bring financial and ethical support to the Indigenous Communities of Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc in the North of Argentina in the fight against lithium extraction on their ancestral lands. Fairclouds brings to life the economic model we call partial common ownership in support of this cause.
You can now explore the platform and become one of the first Cloudstewards! (We recommend accessing the platform on a desktop device, as mobile functionality is still under development.)
There are hidden ecologies within the cloudscape above Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc... The clouds contain multitudinal forms, drawn from the collective imagination of beholders from around the world... These artworks will reveal themselves to worthy stewards.
After exploring Fairclouds, we invite you to submit a feedback form. Your insights are vital and will help us shape the platform ahead of its public launch.
From Around the Pluriverse
→ Citizenship as a Service: An essay by Tianyu M. Fang in Combinations Magazine. “Micro-states like Saint Kitts and Nevis now earn more from selling passports than all other exports combined. While tech utopians dream of digital republics, the growing marketplace for citizenship is already virtualizing sovereignty from within.” Physical copies of Combinations Magazine: Issue I are out now! Order today.
→ Reciprocity in the Age of AI: An article by Anna Tumadóttir, CEO of Creative Commons, on their new strategic plan, which includes piloting “a framework that makes reciprocity actionable when shared knowledge is used to train generative AI.”
→ Can We Use AI to Build a Fairer Society?: An interview with Glen Weyl as part of the AI Futures Worldbuilding Course organized by Beatrice Erkers, Director of the Existential Hope Program at Foresight Institute.
→ Where Does Knowledge Come From? Funding Informational Commons in a World with AI: A presentation by Matt Prewitt and Barry Threw, the Executive and Artistic Director of Gray Area, at last month’s Funding the Commons event in San Francisco.
→ T7 Policy Brief: Innovating Digital Infrastructure: G7 Champions Data Agency: A policy brief by our friends at the Global Solutions Initiative and Project Liberty Institute on how governments can drive positive digital infrastructure innovation by prioritizing data agency and open-source protocols.
→ Decentralized Data Trusts: A Trust-Minimized and Sustainable Approach to Data Collaboration: A Medium post by Andreas Fauler, RxC Germany chapter leader and founding member of the Rocketstar Foundation, on how decentralization might benefit Data Trusts.
→ Plural Management: A paper by Tobin South, Leon Erichsen, Shrey Jain, Petar Maymounkov, Scott Moore and Glen Weyl that introduces a model for partially replacing hierarchical organizational authority with plural mechanisms allowing networked authority.
→ NGI Zero Commons Fund (2025-06Z): A new funding round from the EU Commission Horizon grant program for open internet projects based in Europe.
Where To Meet Us Next
Monthly Community Call
You’re invited to our May 2025 Community Call on Wednesday, May 7th at 12 pm ET (UTC-5) | 6 pm CET (UTC+1). Use this Typeform to add discussion topics to the agenda, and we’ll see you there!
Upcoming Events
Matt Prewitt, RxC President, will participate in the Global Solutions Summit on May 5-6 in Berlin. Matt will also attend the INMA World Congress of News Media on May 19-23, and a workshop on “Using Collective Action to Develop a New Social Contract for Machine Reuse” organized by Creative Commons on May 20, in NYC.
Jack Henderson, RxC COO, will also attend the INMA World Congress of News Media and Creative Commons workshop in NYC. Jack will also participate in the Digital Futures Roundtable Series organized by New America’s Planetary Politics program on June 3 in Washington, D.C.
Malik Lakoubay, RxC Head of Policy and Outreach, will participate in a panel on the partial common ownership of art at the Parisian gallery Artivistas on May 26.
Live long and prosper,
The RxC Team