Who Owns Knowledge? - Citizen Science, Data, and the Future of AI

Every day, citizens help produce the data that science runs on: measuring air quality, mapping their neighbourhoods, tracking their own health. That same data increasingly ends up somewhere else too: training the AI systems shaping our future. So who actually owns it, and who gets to benefit?

In this hands-on event, you won't just hear about that question, you'll step inside it and share your story. After a short warm-up, you'll take on a role: a citizen, a researcher, a startup, a city government, or an AI company. Across realistic scenarios, from community environmental monitoring to AI training datasets, you'll negotiate the things that really matter: who owns the data, who can access it, who gets credit, and what happens when a project scales from local to global.

What should we prioritise? Openness versus control, public good versus commercial value, privacy versus innovation. Those debates then feed into a short fireside chat, where speakers working on European data governance and research infrastructures respond to what you came up with and connect it to the bigger picture.

We close with open networking and drinks and provide a space to keep the conversation going across fields, sectors, and perspectives. No background in data or policy needed. Just bring your curiosity and your point of view.

Event agenda:

16:45 – 17:00 · Arrive (15 min)
Warm welcome - arrive and collect your role card. 

17:00 – 18:00 · The Negotiation Game (60 min)

18:00 – 18:30 · Fireside Chat (30 min)
Fireside chat from experts in European citizen science and data governance topics to discuss about the deals you made and connect them to the real debates shaping data rights and AI today.

18:30 – 19:00 · Drinks & Connections (30 min)
Keep the conversation going over a drink. Swap perspectives, find collaborators, interact with the community working on what comes next.