AI technology is transforming the world right now, in remarkable and practical ways. And these are still early days for AI — experts foresee that the coming years and decades will bring dramatic new AI advances such as Artificial General Intelligence, human-like robots walking the streets, and emergent Internet-scale intelligence. We are currently seeing an increasing centralization of AI R&D and deployment in a small set of large tech companies and governments. We believe that both the present and future of AI and humanity will result in a better future if a greater element of decentralized and widespread participatory control is introduced into the picture.