Digital Commons, Governance and AI Algorithmic Management

What Digital Commons are? Why are online projects such as Wikipedia, Free software, Open Street Map, called Digital Commons? What is the resource they manage? How do they manage it? It will address the paradox of the digital commons,
that classically a commons is a group that collectively organizes the regulation of the consumption of a rare, rival resource. The production of knowledge, online, does not seem to fall in this definition. Discussing what is the resource help understanding how this projects work, what are their difference, but also their similarity with other online projects.

This will be illustrated with a study of how a digital common, Wikipedia, uses algorithmic management via AI tools to govern its commons. The findings show that this algorithmic management has the same consequences as in private platforms: it may lead to the over-standardization of contributions, make it more difficult for newcomers to understand the platform’s rules, and reinforce the project hierarchy between (1) the controlees and (2) the controllers or “policy-makers”. But collective governance allows for online discussion spaces within the information system, which allows for better long-term monitoring of the algorithms’ inevitable discrepancies.

Biography

Nicolas Jullien is professor at IMT Atlantique, one of the leading French University of technology, and visiting professor at Ca'Foscari, Venice University, department of Management for the universitary year 2022-2023. He is also the scientific director of Marsouin, the Breton research network on digital society. His research deals with the open innovation paradigm from an innovation economics perspective. He studies the interactions between institutions and collective non-market production, open innovation organizations (like free software, Wikipedia): how the economics theory can explain their emergence, how these collectives impact industries (business models, organization of the work), how the participation of such institutions to the collective production impact their goal and organization, and more generally how these socio- technical projects work.