From Pessimism to Promise: Reimagining Trust and Global Digital Governance in the Age of AI

At a time when public discourse around AI and digital governance is increasingly shaped by fear, polarization, and institutional distrust, this keynote asks how we might move beyond what she calls a “pessimism paralysis”—a form of collective impotence in imagining AI-enabled futures. Drawing on insights from her award-winning book From Pessimism to Promise with MIT Press, the talk argues for a reimagining of global digital governance that moves beyond containment and compliance-driven frameworks toward more aspirational, applied, and culturally grounded approaches to trust and institutional building.

Based on two decades of digital ethnographic research across the Global South, she examines how people engage with digital systems amid deep inequalities, infrastructural gaps, and competing visions of technological futures. These everyday negotiations challenge dominant assumptions that trustworthy governance can be achieved solely through technical safeguards, regulation, or standardized ethical principles. Instead, trust emerges through relationships, participation, care, and the recognition of diverse social realities.

The keynote will explore practical pathways for strengthening digital governance through inclusive innovation, cross-cultural AI design, and participatory models of governance that center the Majority World. By reframing trust not as a static institutional outcome but as an ongoing social process, it offers a more optimistic and globally grounded vision for governing AI and digital transformation in ways that foster legitimacy, resilience, and collective possibility.