Collective action

How do patterns of collaboration and collective action shape individual and collective agency, in human groups and in human–AI constellations? The central question: under what conceptual, organisational and material conditions do collaborative practices give rise to a robust sense of “we-agency” without eroding the autonomy and sense of agency of individual participants?

Leads: Mehdi Khamassi (ISIR), Cédric Paternotte (Sorbonne Université) Contributors: Ismael Freire, Emma Gouné, Marceau Nahon, Alberto Naibo, Daniel Andler, post-doctoral researcher (ISIR)

Approach

The work package takes as its benchmark a three-layered model of human agency — the rational “I”, the joint “we”, the role-bound “me” — and asks how this model must be refined once collaboration is mediated by different environments (digital platforms, physical artefacts, organisational structures) and when AI systems become active components of the collaborative ensemble.

Three subtasks

1. Agency in a collective of collaborating humans — revisiting accounts of joint action and shared intention in the light of the idea that collective agency is generated in and through structured patterns of collective action.
2. The role of the environment — how material, digital and hybrid environments redistribute cognitive and normative labour and modulate participants’ sense of control and responsibility.
3. Collaboration between humans and AI — which roles artificial components can play in collective action; when collaboration with AI enhances human capacities and when it risks undermining individual agency (opacity, over-reliance, loss of skill) or collective agency (shift of effective control to AI systems).