Hi all To all AOIR attendees, please consider attending. We have ~20 spots for presentations but we are hoping to hear from you July to gauge interest. We are asking for short abstracts to help us organize the conference. Full-day, 15 October 2025 at AOIR 2025 Big AI’s demands for this world are becoming clearer. Microsoft, in 2023, announced plans to build new data centers with nuclear power to fuel new energy-hungry models (Calma, 2023). Google and Amazon made similar announcements subsequently (da Silva, 2024; Olick, 2024). Plans to build nuclear-powered AI data centers clearly illustrate the scale and consequences of AI as a social blueprint — rendering clear “the choices (implicit or explicit) made in the course of technological innovation” and demanding reflection on “the grounds for making those choices wisely” (Winner, 1986, p. 18). Building on the material turn in Internet Studies (Hesmondhalgh, 2022; Sandvig, 2013), our preconference gathers scholars to explore ruptures against the growing cyberphysical project of “Big AI” (van der Vlist et al., 2024) or “AI as platform” (Mahnke & Bagger, 2024). We welcome all AOIR attendees to participate in our preconference. To help us organize the pre-conference, please complete this survey to request a presentation slot, or to be a facilitator: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=hfFpVS_SE06YUM5bGrz... We ask potential presenters and facilitators to please complete the form by 27 June 2025 to give us time to organize. Please read the preconfernece's description below. Our preconference has three objectives: Share findings and digital methods that expose AI’s global technological footprint with an emphasis on the Americas or engaged and speculative research on alternative AI infrastructures that may include local or regional infrastructure, the fediverse, frugal AI infrastructures, decentralized, and/or distributed infrastructures; Facilitate comparative policy research on measures to promote alternative AI infrastructures as well as benefit public interest and community benefits for these alternative infrastructures; Develop a joint statement about recommendations for a new infrastructure for AI to be written collaboratively by discussants. Together, our pre-conference seeks to cultivate an international research community dedicated to understanding AI’s infrastructural impact and its alternatives. The conference offers international scholars a chance to develop collaborative projects as well as shape collective policy recommendations. Outputs directly advance the annual call for “strategies and tactics to address the ruptures caused by platformization” in this case of AI? We focus our call on questioning what public interest infrastructure would look like for AI. Public interest AI refers to “support those outcomes best serving the long-term survival and well-being of a social collective construed as a ‘public’” (Public Interest AI, n.d.). The Paris Charter on Artificial Intelligence in the Public Interest (2025), published after the Paris AI Summit, aims to “encourage a more comprehensive and inclusive design of AI in the public interest, in terms of technology, organization and institutions that serve different jurisdictions and communities in attaining similar success.” Public interest AI, however, is already a contentious term and not dissimilar to other terms “AI for Good” or “Responsible AI” that can act as ethics washing (Bourne, 2024; Wagner, 2018). Scholarly attention is required to define public interest AI as a critical concept. The preconference will be a full day to ensure there is time for presentations, networking, and collaborative activities. Participants will be selected through a peer-reviewed call with two tracks, one for presentations and a second for discussants and facilitators. Presentations will advance objectives 1 and 2 in the morning. The afternoon will leverage discussants and facilitators to develop collaborative research projects and synthesize research into a joint statement. Our schedule can accommodate two parallel tracks to welcome 20 presentations and a total of 50 participants. A closing plenary will showcase key themes, with discussants offering reflections and key insights from the day. Our preconference intends to be multilingual, with collaborators working in English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. The steering committee will accept abstracts in all four languages. The preconference is made possible by the Chaire de recherche du Québec sur l’intelligence artificielle et le numérique francophones and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Organizers: Fenwick McKelvey-Concordia University, Canada; Mónica Humeres-Universidad de Chile; Claudia López-Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María; Veridiana Domingos Cordeiro-University of São Paulo; Luciano Frizzera-University of Waterloo; Nicolas Chartier-Edwards – Institut national de la recherche scientifique References Calma, J. (2023, September 26). Microsoft is going nuclear to power its AI ambitions. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/26/23889956/microsoft-next-generation-nuclea... da Silva, J. (2024, October 15). Google turns to nuclear to power AI data centres. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c748gn94k95o Hesmondhalgh, D. (2022). The Infrastructural turn in Media and Internet Research Proposal review. In P. McDonald (Ed.), The Routledge companion to media industries (pp. 132–142). Routledge. Mahnke, M. S., & Bagger, C. (2024). Navigating platformized generative AI: Examining early adopters’ experiences through the lens of data reflectivity. Convergence, 30(6), 1974–1991. https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565241300857 Olick, D. (2024, October 16). Amazon goes nuclear, plans to invest more than $500 million to develop small modular reactors. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/energy/amazon-goes-nuclear-plans-invest-500... Public Interest AI. (n.d.). Retrieved February 23, 2025, from https://publicinterest.ai/ Sandvig, C. (2013). The Internet as Infrastructure. In W. H. Dutton (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Internet studies (pp. 86–108). Oxford University Press. The Paris Charter on Artificial Intelligence in the Public Interest. (2025, February 11). Elysee.Fr. https://www.elysee.fr/en/emmanuel-macron/2025/02/11/the-paris-charter-on-art... van der Vlist, F., Helmond, A., & Ferrari, F. (2024). Big AI: Cloud infrastructure dependence and the industrialisation of artificial intelligence. Big Data & Society, 11(1), 20539517241232630. https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517241232630 Wagner, B. (2018). Ethics As An Escape From Regulation: From “Ethics-washing” to Ethics-shopping? In E. Bayamlioğlu, I. Baraliuc, L. Janssens, & M. Hildebrandt (Eds.), Being Profiled (pp. 84–89). Amsterdam University Press; JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvhrd092.18 Winner, L. (1986). The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology. University of Chicago Press. -- Be good, Fen Be good, Fen