By Kenzie Love
Amidst all the recent hype surrounding AI, there’s reason to believe that some of the claims surrounding it have been overblown. It hasn’t thus far led to huge productivity gains and suggestions it has started a “jobs apocalypse” within white collar work also appear to be inflated. While the technology is certainly changing rapidly, it might still be more accurate to state, as Hypha Worker Co-operative’s Andi Argast observed last year,that “AI is, at this point in its evolution, a tool for automation that makes some things easier but also has some concerning implications.”
If much of the hype around AI has been overstated, however, little has occurred to dispel these concerning implications. The field remains dominated by a few big corporate players whose platforms are continuing to operate with little regard for privacy, data security, copyright infringement, or the environment.
This is the state of affairs that inspired Reclaiming the Stack Co-operative AI Infrastructure for Canada’s Solidarity Economy: A Feasibility Study. The study, produced by CanTrust Hosting Co-operative and Hypha Worker Co-operative with funding from Co-operators’ Co-operative Development Program, “examines whether a genuinely co-operative alternative is feasible: one that preserves data sovereignty, democratic governance, and environmental integrity without asking organisations to accept inferior tools or prohibitive costs.” The study concludes “such an alternative is both technically achievable, and clearly needed.”
Although using the big AI platforms, as the study notes, is clearly at odds with the solidarity economy’s values, the lack of an alternative means many organizations within the sector are using it anyway, at a rate far exceeding the Canadian average (over 60 percent versus the 12 percent found by Statistics Canada’s 2025 survey). At the same time, these organizations are aware of the ethical minefield this represents, with many citing “values alignment” as a concern when using AI.
The study’s proposed solution to this issue is the “Solidarity Stack”, a long-term, sustainable AI ecosystem built for and governed by Canadian organizations. The Stack would be the culmination of a multi-year, phased approach which would be broken down into three distinct, manageable pieces. According to the study, “The approach involves pooling compute resources across a small number of anchor clients, hosted on Canadian servers running on verified renewable energy, but managed centrally by a co-operative provider on behalf of member organisations. Each co-operative gets a private, segmented environment for their data, without having their data transit or reside in the U.S.”
The end goal of this approach is “helping co-operatives take back control of their technical future.” Achieving this control is likely easier said than done, given the costs associated with building the Stack, the speed at which the Big Tech is moving to further dominate this field, and the risks inherent in the technology, whoever designs or controls it. But the use of AI may not be so very different from other technologies the solidarity economy (including the worker co-op sector) has adopted, if it’s governed by the understanding that its role is to serve people rather than rule them. As the study concludes, “the co-operative movement today can champion a vision of AI that is in service of people and planet, not just profit.”