Democracy, Rebuilt

OCTOBER 21-23, 2026

St James Theatre, Montreal

In the year since last year’s ATTENTION: Govern or be Governed convened 250 leaders in Montreal, the governance question has shifted under our feet. AI systems are no longer arriving; they are deploying, at scale, into the core functions of democratic life: decision-making in government, information production in journalism, knowledge work in the academy, organizing in civil society.

What follows will be a period of rapid social transformation, and with it the conditions to strain or social fabric: labour market shocks, epistemic disruption, reorganized public services, new patterns of political organization and contestation. Sovereignty over democratic institutions is not a given in this moment of rapid change. It is a posture democratic societies must now take, and a project they will have to pursue together.

Attention 2026 takes up this challenge. The conference convenes the people already doing this work from within the institutions themselves. Together we will work through two questions: 

  • what democratic values and norms must be preserved as AI reshapes the functions around them;

  • what it would actually take to rebuild the institutional capacity to uphold them at the speed of the transition.

Through two days of plenary and a full day of facilitated workshops, Attention 2026 is designed to generate shared language, cross-border relationships, and policy instruments that give democratic institutions a meaningful foothold in the governance of AI. 

Conference Co-Chairs:

  • João Brant

    Secretary for Digital Policies at the Secretariat of Social Communication of the Presidency of the Republic of Brazil

  • Maria Ressa

    UN AI panel co-chair, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, journalist Columbia University

  • Ethan Zuckerman

    Professor and Director of the UMass Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure

  • Hugo LaRochelle

    Mila - Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute

  • Marietje Schaake

    Tech-policy expert

  • Ben Scott

    CEO of Reset Tech

Event Speakers

  • Laura Marquez-Garrett

    Laura Marquez-Garrett

    Attorney, Social Media Victims Law Center

  • Sasha Havlicek

    Sasha Havlicek

    Co-founder, CEO, Institute for Strategic Dialogue

  • Bruce Schneier

    Bruce Schneier

    Security Technologist / Author

  • Valerie Pisano

    Valerie Pisano

    President and CEO, Mila

  • Nina Jankowicz

    Nina Jankowicz

    CEO, American Sunlight Project

  • Anya Schiffrin

    Anya Schiffrin

    Professor, Columbia University, SIPA

  • Liz Moody

    Liz Moody

    Strategic Advisor, Musical AI

  • Ravi Iyer

    Ravi Iyer

    Managing Director, USC Marshall School's Neely Center

  • Joshua Tucker

    Joshua Tucker

    Professor / Director, NYU Center for Social Media and Politics

  • Jiore Craig

    Jiore Craig

    Resident Senior Fellow, Digital Integrity, ISD Global

  • David Walmsley

    David Walmsley

    Editor-in-Chief, Globe and Mail

  • Michelle Ringuette

    Michelle Ringuette

    Assistant to the President, American Federation of Teachers

  • H. Nanjala Nyabola

    H. Nanjala Nyabola

    Writer/Researcher

  • Rebecca Finley

    Rebecca Finley

    CEO, Partnership on AI

  • Edward Tsoi

    Edward Tsoi

    Co-Founder, AI Safety Asia

  • Taylor Owen

    Taylor Owen

    Beaverbrook Chair in Media, Ethics and Communication, and Founding Director of the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy, McGill University

  • Graham Burnett

    Graham Burnett

    Henry Charles Lea Professor of History and History of Science

  • Camille Francois

    Camille Francois

    Researcher, Columbia University SIPA

  • Andrew Strait

    Andrew Strait

    Ada Lovelace Institute

  • Rumman Chowdhury

    Rumman Chowdhury

    CEO and Founder, Humane Intelligence

  • Jason Swanson

    Jason Swanson

    Senior Director, Strategic Foresight, Knowledge Works

  • Beeban Kidron

    Baroness Beeban Kidron

    Member of UK House of Lords and Filmmaker

  • Jason Stanley

    Jason Stanley

    Professor of Philosophy and American Studies, Monk School, University of Toronto

Next

The Attention Forum: October 23/24th 2025