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Birds of Feather(BoF) Advanced

Working together for an open source and digital rights anchored approach to global AI governance

Proposal status is Review Pending
Session Description

As India prepares to host the next Global AI Summit in early 2026, this Birds of a Feather session invites open source contributors, AI researchers, digital rights advocates, and tech sector participants to come together and co-develop community recommendations on AI governance.

Much of the current discourse around “open source AI” focuses on licensing, but leaves critical gaps in transparency, access to training data, and model documentation — raising concerns about open-washing and the hollowing out of true openness. This BoF will create space for participants to explore:


  • What should true open source AI look like in practice — beyond licensing to data, models, and documentation?

  • How can India’s FOSS and tech communities contribute to policy frameworks that advance responsible, rights-respecting AI at home and globally?

  • How can community-driven AI projects serve as alternatives to proprietary, closed models — especially for the Global South?


Session goals

  • Crowdsource recommendations that India’s FOSS and tech communities can bring to the 2026 Global AI Summit.

  • Identify shared priorities for openness, transparency, and accountability in AI development.

  • Build connections between open source contributors, tech companies, and policy advocates around AI governance.

  • This BoF is designed to be highly interactive - participants will collaborate in small groups, share perspectives, and help draft initial ideas that could inform broader national and global discussions on AI policy from the perspective of FOSS community

Key Takeaways

Participants will help co-develop community-informed policy recommendations that India can champion at the global level—including licensing norms, open model infrastructure, and public funding principles. This session seeks to bring together diverse voices across civil society, tech, and FOSS communities to shape the future of AI governance.

References

https://www.accessnow.org/artificial-intelligence/
https://assets.mofoprod.net/network/documents/Towards_a_Framework_for_Openness_in_Foundation_Models.pdf
https://ainowinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/IX.-The-Openness-Imperative-Charting-a-Path-for-Public-AI.pdf
https://opensource.org/blog/reimagining-data-for-open-source-ai-a-call-to-action
https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/de/publikationen/publikation/did/public-ai-white-paper-a-public-alternative-to-private-ai-dominance

Session Categories

Knowledge Commons (Open Hardware, Open Science, Open Data etc.)
Other
Public policy

Which track are you applying for?

Geopolitics and Policy in FOSS Devroom

Speakers

Raman Jit Singh Chima
Raman Jit Singh Chima Senior International Counsel and Asia Pacific Policy Director | Access Now

Raman Jit Singh Chima is Senior International Counsel and Asia Pacific Policy Director at the international non-profit organisation Access Now, where he also serves as the organisation’s Global Cybersecurity Lead. He co-founded India's SaveTheInternet.in campaign for net neutrality, and later helped co-found the Article 21 Trust and the Internet Freedom Foundation. He assisted the legal team involved in the Supreme Court of India's landmark Shreya Singhal v. Union of India judgment on Internet free speech, and has been included in Forbes Magazine's 30-Under-30 list of leaders in India under the Law and Policy category in 2016. He previously served as Policy Counsel and Government Affairs Manager in Google’s Asia Pacific team based in India and held senior roles in industry associations. In 2019, he was awarded a Chevening Cybersecurity Fellowship and completed a programme of study at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. Raman is a graduate of the National Law School of India University at Bangalore, where he co-founded and was later elected chief editor of the Indian Journal of Law and Technology.