Cooperative AI?

“Cooperative AI?” by Trebor Scholz and Stefano Tortorici argues that artificial intelligence intensifies capitalism’s contradictions—concentrating wealth, exploiting labor, and deepening environmental and social crises—while excluding democratic control. The authors propose cooperative ownership as a pathway to reclaim AI’s infrastructure and governance. Drawing on Du Bois, Luxemburg, Federici, and Polanyi, they situate cooperatives as “laboratories of prefiguration,” capable of modeling non-capitalist relations through shared data, democratic management, and ethical production. Yet they acknowledge structural limits: cooperatives risk reproducing hierarchies, becoming neutralized, or assimilating into market logic. Case studies such as Mondragon, SEWA, Transkribus, and CoopCycle illustrate both the promise and the compromises of cooperative enterprise. The text calls for alliances among cooperatives, unions, and public institutions to build federated, worker-governed AI infrastructures and policies rooted in solidarity, ecological care, and community control. Ultimately, it envisions cooperative AI as a counter-hegemonic force rather than an ethical niche within capitalism.