Via Lattea · Free online workshops
Who holds power over AI? Two free workshops for NGOs and activists.
A curious friend, not a prophet of doom. Two hours to work through how AI concentrates power, why autonomous weapons are where that power could become permanent, and how organisations like yours keep the public in the picture. Because every conversation shifts the trajectory.
Thu 10 December 2026 and Tue 12 January 2027 · 16:00 CET
Why it matters
AI is reshaping economies, politics and war faster than the public can weigh in. The risk we care most about is lock-in: a small group takes permanent control, and no one can undo it. Today, holding power by force takes people, and any soldier, police officer or official can refuse. That refusal is one of the last real checks we have. Autonomous weapons remove it. We call this the loyalty bottleneck, and it is one of the clearest paths from powerful AI to catastrophic, even existential, risk. None of this is inevitable. Rules can prevent it, and rules need public pressure behind them. That is the work civil society exists to do. These workshops turn that conviction into practice: clear-eyed about the risks, hopeful about what organised people can still decide.
What you'll explore
A hands-on, conversation-led session, with no slides to sit through. Working from real, concrete risks, your team digs into four things:
Monopoly, compute and capital: why a handful of actors increasingly set the rules for everyone, and what that means on the ground.
The quiet points (automation, dependence, regulatory capture) and the sharpest one, autonomous weapons, where machines decide who lives and who dies and ordinary people get written out of the decision.
Turning worry into clear, usable angles: what to say, who to reach, and where pressure actually moves things.
How your existing work connects to keeping AI accountable, and one concrete next step you can take afterwards.
Who it's for
NGO staff, activists and volunteers working in advocacy groups, non-profits, community organisations and campaigns. No technical background needed: the session is designed for organisers, communicators and campaigners, and works best with a mix of roles and perspectives in the room. Invite two or three colleagues to register too and you'll leave with a shared way of talking about AI and power.
The sessions
Map how AI shifts power and rank the risks that matter most to the communities you work with. Leave with concrete angles for your own advocacy.
Turn analysis into action: build the story of how things go wrong, including catastrophic lock-in scenarios, then design how your organisation helps rewrite it.
What you'll leave with
Who's running it
Via Lattea is a non-profit in Rome's Testaccio working where activism, art and education meet. Our EduCampaigning method moves from education to workshops to public campaigns to social change: we don't just inform people, we help them act. We are part of the Stop Killer Robots coalition (260+ organisations, 70+ countries). These sessions are part of a project on AI, power and autonomous weapons, supported by Manifund / grantmaking.ai, and everything we produce is open source.
Questions
No. The workshops are designed for organisers, communicators and campaigners. We explain everything from scratch, and no technical background is needed.
Yes. Both workshops are free, funded by a grant, so there is nothing to pay and no catch.
Each session lasts two hours, online. Session 1 is on Thursday 10 December 2026 and session 2 on Tuesday 12 January 2027, both at 16:00 CET.
No. You can register for one session or for both. When you register, tick the session or sessions you want.
The workshops are held in English.
After you register we send you a confirmation email with the details, then a reminder before each session you signed up for, with the link to join online.
Yes, and we encourage it: the sessions work best with a mix of roles in the room. Each person registers individually with their own email, so everyone gets the details and reminders.
Yes, in a grounded way. We start from concrete questions of power and control that NGOs and activists already face, and follow them to their most serious consequences, including autonomous weapons and the irreversible loss of human control. No technical background is needed.
NGO staff, activists and volunteers working in advocacy groups, non-profits, community organisations and campaigns: organisers, communicators and campaigners who want to understand how AI concentrates power and what their organisation can do about it.
A shared way of talking about AI and power, concrete angles to bring these questions into your own campaigns, and a working toolkit you can reuse with your team.
Jenna Jauhiainen and Salvatore Barbera of Via Lattea APS, a non-profit based in Rome. Everything we produce for the project is open source.
Register
Tell us a little about you. We'll hold you a place and send the details. It takes a minute.
We have saved your place.
A confirmation email is on its way. If you do not see it in a few minutes, check your spam folder. We will send you a reminder before each session.
Questions? Write to hello@vialattea.org.
Funded and open
Preserving the Human Veto is supported by a $20,000 grant from grantmaking.ai through Manifund. It pays for the first open-source curriculum, toolkit and pilot workshops for NGOs and activist groups across Europe. Everything we produce is free to reuse.
The full programme needs $120,000: more languages, more countries, more trained organisations. If you can help us get there, you can donate on Manifund.