Global AI governance must address structural power imbalances and colonial tech legacies
Original framing: “We have to manage the AI revolution” — Financial Times
Black and Indigenous communities have long warned about the harms of unregulated AI, from predictive policing to facial recognition bias. Global South activists demand reparations for data exploitation and control over AI systems affecting their communities. Migrant workers, often exploited in AI data labeling, are organizing for fair wages and ethical AI labor standards.
The Financial Times' framing of AI governance as a technical challenge obscures its roots in colonial data extraction and neoliberal capitalism, where power is concentrated in the hands of Northern elites.
True systemic change requires dismantling these structures through reparative justice, data sovereignty, and Global South-led governance, as seen in movements like OCAP and the African Union's AI policies. Indigenous and marginalized voices, long silenced in tech discourse, offer radical alternatives—Ubuntu, buen vivir, and decolonial AI—that prioritize communal flourishing over profit. The trickster's role, embodied in figures like Anansi, reveals the absurdity of solemn governance narratives while pointing to decentralized, community-owned futures. Without centering these perspectives, AI governance will merely reproduce existing inequalities, turning the 'revolution' into another tool of domination rather than liberation.