Our Research Framework

Our research focuses on developing AI systems that communities own, govern, and benefit from economically while building sustainable infrastructure for technological sovereignty.

Research Areas

Algorithmic Oversight & Legal Defense

Building tools, frameworks, and legal strategies for communities to audit, challenge, and control algorithmic systems that affect their housing, employment, healthcare, and daily services while defending their technological rights.

Key Research Questions:

  • How can communities audit discriminatory housing and hiring algorithms?
  • What legal frameworks enable community data ownership and algorithm oversight?
  • How do communities navigate existing laws that favor corporate technological control?

Applied Outcomes:

  • Community audit toolkits for algorithmic discrimination with legal backing
  • Legal frameworks for community data ownership and algorithm governance
  • Rights-based advocacy tools for technological self-determination

Distributed AI Infrastructure

Building federated AI architectures that enable communities to develop, train, and deploy their own AI systems without dependence on corporate platforms, surveillance, or extractive data relationships.

Key Research Questions:

  • How can communities run AI systems without sending data to big tech?
  • What technical frameworks enable neighborhood-controlled AI networks?
  • How do we build accessible AI infrastructure that communities can maintain long-term?

Applied Outcomes:

  • Community-controlled federated learning platforms with full data sovereignty
  • Local AI training infrastructure for grassroots organizations and cooperatives
  • Accessible technical systems that communities can operate without corporate dependence

Cultural Knowledge Protection & Indigenous Data Sovereignty

Developing AI systems that preserve and amplify cultural knowledge while ensuring communities maintain complete control over their linguistic, spiritual, and traditional assets, with special focus on indigenous data sovereignty.

Key Research Questions:

  • How can communities use AI for language preservation without cultural extraction?
  • What frameworks protect sacred and traditional knowledge from corporate appropriation?
  • How do we integrate traditional ecological knowledge with AI while respecting cultural protocols?

Applied Outcomes:

  • Indigenous-controlled language models with full cultural governance protocols
  • Traditional knowledge preservation systems with community-defined access controls
  • AI tools that amplify rather than replace traditional wisdom and land-based knowledge

Cooperative AI Economics & Local Value Creation

Creating AI systems that generate local economic value, supporting worker cooperatives and community-controlled resource allocation while building sustainable alternatives to extractive corporate platforms.

Key Research Questions:

  • How can AI systems be designed to keep profits in communities rather than extracting them?
  • What economic models enable community ownership of AI platforms at scale?
  • How do we measure and optimize for community wealth building rather than corporate extraction?

Applied Outcomes:

  • AI-powered cooperative platform development that competes with extractive corporations
  • Community-controlled economic planning and investment systems
  • Revenue-sharing models that build community wealth through locally-owned AI

Algorithmic Defense & Anti-Surveillance

Developing early warning systems, protective tools, and defensive technologies that help communities resist algorithmic discrimination, corporate surveillance, and state technological control.

Key Research Questions:

  • How can communities detect and resist algorithmic discrimination before it causes harm?
  • What early warning systems protect against AI-driven displacement, surveillance, and policing?
  • How do we build anti-surveillance AI that strengthens community resilience and privacy?

Applied Outcomes:

  • Early warning systems for algorithmic gentrification, employment discrimination, and displacement
  • Community defense tools against corporate surveillance and predictive policing
  • Privacy-preserving technologies that protect community organizing and mutual aid

Participatory AI Design & Youth Technology Leadership

Advancing methodologies that put community members—especially youth and next-generation leaders—in the driver's seat of AI development, ensuring technology serves their values while building long-term community capacity.

Key Research Questions:

  • How do we design AI systems with communities as co-creators, not just consultants?
  • What processes enable youth to lead community technology development projects?
  • How can intergenerational knowledge sharing improve AI effectiveness while maintaining community control?

Applied Outcomes:

  • Community technology education programs that build power, not just skills
  • Youth-led AI development projects that serve community-defined needs
  • Intergenerational knowledge transfer frameworks for technological resistance and innovation

Data Sovereignty & Benefit-Sharing

Researching technical and governance frameworks that ensure communities control their own data, participate in AI development as equals, and receive direct economic benefits rather than being exploited as free data sources.

Key Research Questions:

  • How can communities maintain ownership and control of their data while using AI systems?
  • What technical architectures prevent corporate data extraction while enabling community AI development?
  • How do we design benefit-sharing that ensures communities profit from AI trained on their data?

Applied Outcomes:

  • Community data trusts with local governance and direct economic benefit-sharing
  • Privacy-preserving AI training that serves community prosperity, not corporate profit
  • Technical systems that make corporate data extraction impossible while enabling community AI

Environmental Justice & Crisis Response AI

Developing AI systems that support community-led environmental monitoring, climate adaptation, disaster response, and resistance to environmental racism while centering frontline community knowledge and priorities.

Key Research Questions:

  • How can communities use AI to monitor, prove, and resist environmental racism and corporate pollution?
  • What role can community-controlled AI play in climate adaptation and disaster response?
  • How do we integrate traditional ecological knowledge with AI for community-controlled environmental planning?

Applied Outcomes:

  • Community-controlled pollution monitoring and environmental health tracking systems
  • Climate adaptation and disaster response tools that frontline communities design and operate
  • AI systems that support traditional ecological knowledge and community land management

Worker-Owned Platform Cooperatives & Democratic Algorithms

Researching AI architectures and economic models that enable workers to build their own platforms, compete with extractive corporate systems, and maintain democratic control over algorithmic management.

Key Research Questions:

  • How can workers use AI to build platforms they own instead of being exploited by corporate platforms?
  • What AI architectures support democratic worker governance rather than top-down algorithmic management?
  • How do we design platform intelligence that serves worker agency and collective power?

Applied Outcomes:

  • AI-enhanced cooperative platforms that directly compete with Uber, Amazon, and other extractors
  • Democratic algorithms for worker-controlled scheduling, pricing, and resource allocation
  • Economic models that ensure platform profits flow to workers, not distant shareholders

Inclusive AI Safety & Disability Justice

Developing AI safety frameworks that prioritize the real-world safety of marginalized communities—especially disabled communities—rather than abstract alignment with corporate or researcher values.

Key Research Questions:

  • How do we define AI safety from the perspective of communities experiencing AI harm?
  • What safety frameworks center disabled communities' self-determined needs and accessibility requirements?
  • How can marginalized communities participate as leaders in defining what makes AI safe for them?

Applied Outcomes:

  • Community-defined safety standards that address real harms, not hypothetical corporate risks
  • AI safety frameworks designed by and for disabled communities and other marginalized populations
  • Accessible AI systems that challenge ableist assumptions while serving disabled communities' priorities

Economic Impact & Evaluation

Researching economic models, measurement frameworks, and evaluation methods that enable AI to generate and retain wealth in communities while tracking community power rather than corporate metrics.

Key Research Questions:

  • How can AI systems be designed to build community wealth and power rather than extract it?
  • What measurement frameworks track community technological sovereignty rather than just technical performance?
  • How do communities evaluate their own progress toward technological self-determination?

Applied Outcomes:

  • Community investment funds and wealth-building strategies powered by locally-controlled AI
  • Community-defined metrics for measuring technological sovereignty and AI impact
  • Participatory evaluation methods that help communities assess and improve their technological power

Solidarity Technology Networks & Movement Coordination

Developing technical and social frameworks for AI systems that connect communities and movements while preserving local autonomy, supporting crisis response, and resisting corporate platform control.

Key Research Questions:

  • How can AI systems support solidarity between communities without centralizing control or homogenizing approaches?
  • What technical architectures enable mutual aid, disaster response, and movement coordination while maintaining community autonomy?
  • How do we build movement technology that strengthens collective power against corporate and state systems?

Applied Outcomes:

  • Mutual aid and disaster response networks powered by community-controlled AI coordination
  • Cross-community organizing platforms that resist corporate surveillance while supporting movement building
  • International solidarity networks that connect local struggles while preserving cultural specificity

Cross-Cutting Research Principles

Community Power & Self-Determination

Every research project must increase community power and control over technology affecting their lives, measuring success by community agency and self-determination rather than technical metrics alone.

Economic Justice & Wealth Building

All AI systems must serve community wealth-building rather than corporate extraction, ensuring economic benefits flow to those who generate the data, use the systems, and live with the consequences.

Cultural Justice & Indigenous Sovereignty

Technology must honor and amplify diverse ways of knowing rather than imposing dominant paradigms, with communities—especially indigenous communities—maintaining complete sovereignty over their cultural and linguistic assets.

Disability Justice & Accessibility

All systems must be designed with disabled communities as leaders, ensuring accessibility is central rather than peripheral and challenging ableist assumptions in AI development.

Anti-Surveillance & Privacy Sovereignty

All systems must protect communities from corporate and state surveillance rather than enabling it, building defensive rather than extractive technological relationships.

Intergenerational Justice & Youth Leadership

Research must build long-term community capacity by centering youth leadership while honoring elder knowledge, ensuring technological sovereignty continues across generations.

Movement Building & Collective Liberation

Research must strengthen collective organizing and solidarity rather than individualized solutions, contributing to broader struggles for racial, economic, environmental, and disability justice.

Research Methodology

The goal isn't just better AI—it's AI that serves community power, cultural sovereignty, collective liberation, and intergenerational justice.

Community-Led Research

Research questions emerge from community struggles and organizing priorities, with communities as co-researchers and decision-makers rather than subjects of study or consultation.

Participatory Technology Development

Technical development involves meaningful community control throughout design, development, and deployment, with communities determining priorities and owning outcomes.

Action Research & Implementation

We build and deploy working systems that communities control, learning through implementation and community feedback rather than theoretical analysis alone.

Movement-Aligned Scholarship

Research contributes to broader movements for social, economic, environmental, and disability justice while maintaining academic rigor and technical innovation.

Youth-Centered Capacity Building

Research processes prioritize building next-generation leadership and technical capacity within communities, ensuring long-term sustainability of technological sovereignty.