PAIRS 2026: Scaling participation in AI from New Delhi to the world

Building on the momentum initiated during the first edition, and with more than 130 presentation and workshop proposals, PAIRS India was designed by its stewards—Pierre Noro, SciencesPo PSIA Tech & Global Affairs Innovation Hub, alongside Astha Kapoor & Vinay Narayan (Aapti Institute, India), Tim Davies & Jeni Tennison (Connected by Data, UK) Kiito Shilongo (Mozilla Foundation, Namibia), and Meg Young (Data & Society, USA)—as a rich, layered experience to bring together the participatory AI community of practice and discuss state-of-the-art research and experimentations across three distinct moments:

January 15: A Pre-Event to chart the path to the Summit

The journey began with a dedicated pre-event to unveil the PAIRS26 program and publish a first op-ed bringing together the takeaways from the inaugural edition and the trajectory set by the programme committee to serve as a collective input to the AI Impact Summit. The Pre-event set the tone for the conversations to come and ensured that the participatory AI community's voice was taken into account in the lead-up to the Summit and at the highest levels of global AI governance.

February 17: The Global Online Symposium

The two-day program opened with a global, online symposium co-chaired by Pierre Noro and Renee Sieber, Professor at McGill University. Participants in India tuned it from the Cyril Shroff Centre for AI, Law & Regulation at Jindal Global University Law School, which gracefully hosted two flagship sessions with speakers present at the Summit in New Delhi:

• A roundtable on transparency, law and participatory AI
• A panel gathering members of the UNESCO CSO & Academic Network on AI Ethics & Policy—a network the Hub is proud to be part of.

February 18: The In-Person Symposium in New Delhi 

The following day brought the community together in person in Delhi for a full day of presentations, workshops, and connection, thus continuing the tradition of dynamic, cross-disciplinary exchange that made the first PAIRS such a successful and memorable event.

A Growing Community of Practice

Scaling up the format of the event translated in greater impact:

The feedback from participants captured the spirit of the event beautifully: 

• 92% of respondents to our feedback survey said that PAIRS “surfaced perspectives they struggle to find otherwise”
• 92% of respondents said they discovered new ideas they want to apply in their own practice

"It was amazing to see papers across very diverse contexts being presented at PAIRS. Clearly, there is a strong and growing community of people testing out the different meanings of participation when it comes to deploying AI systems in high-stakes settings." — Participant Feedback, New Delhi

"The quality of the presentations and presenters was really stellar." — Participant Feedback, Online

A New Milestone for Inclusivity

True to its founding commitment to global inclusivity, PAIRS India marked an important first: thanks to voluntary donations and funding from AI Collaborative, PAIRS was able to provide travel support for presenters from Global South countries for the very first time. This is a milestone we are especially proud of in a context where a few countries and frontier AI labs tend to capture most of the economic benefits of AI and where elected officials, CSOs, academia, and impacted communities, especially from the Global South, struggle to influence AI governance.

Looking Ahead: What's Next for the PAIRS Community

The momentum from PAIRS India is already translating into an ambitious and exciting roadmap for the months ahead.

The PAIRS community will soon return for the second edition of PAIRSx Africa, this time as a fringe event of RightsCon in Zambia. Following the first PAIRSx Africa held on the margins of the Global AI Summit on Africa in Kigali, this edition will continue to center participatory approaches to AI development and governance in African contexts.

Together with partners from the University of Sheffield, the PAIRS community will explore the creation of a collection of case studies documenting existing participatory initiatives — sharing methods, findings, and supporting materials to help practitioners learn from and build on each other's work.

In an exciting collective endeavor, the PAIRS community will be collaboratively crafting a position paper calling for the creation of a Citizens Track in AI Governance—to be launched as part of the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance in July 2026. This initiative reflects the Hub and PAIRS' shared conviction that meaningful participation in AI governance must go beyond experts and institutions to include the voices of citizens and affected communities, furthering previous initiatives such as our open consultation on AI ahead of the Paris Summit.

And of course PAIRS will return in 2027 as a side-event to the next international AI Summit, to be held in Switzerland. We look forward to welcoming the community once again for what promises to be another landmark edition.

PAIRS India has confirmed what the first edition suggested: there is a strong, growing, and genuinely global community ready to push for more participatory, inclusive, and accountable approaches to AI. Along every speaker, participant, partner, and supporter who made this second edition possible, the Hub is proud to support this effort and excited to see it grow.