Community resource hub

The Future of the Museum: 28 Dialogues
András Szántó
As museums shuttered during the 2020 novel-coronavirus pandemic, New York-based author and cultural strategist András Szántó conducted a series of virtual conversations with international museum leaders. At this pivotal moment, the directors spoke candidly about the challenges and untapped potential of art museums. What emerges from the series of in-depth conversations is a composite portrait of a generation of museum leaders working to make institutions more open, democratic, inclusive, experimental and experiential, technologically savvy, culturally polyphonic, attuned to the needs of their visitors and communities, and concerned with addressing the defining issues of the societies around them.

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Democratizing AI
Annette Zimmermann
This book argues that making AI tools widely accessible does not automatically make AI democratic. It examines how power over AI development and regulation is concentrated among a few corporations, creating risks for democratic governance. Zimmermann proposes practical strategies for giving citizens, experts, workers and public institutions a stronger voice in shaping AI’s future. Author Annette Zimmermann will open the NEMO European Museum Conference 2026 with a keynote speech.

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Empire of AI: Inside The Reckless Race For Total Domination
Karen Hao
This book offers a critical look at the global race to dominate artificial intelligence, tracing the rise of a leading AI company and the forces driving the industry. It explores the immense resources behind AI development, from data and labour to energy and computing power, and examines the social, economic and political consequences of this rapidly expanding technology sector.

Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI
Karen Hao
This book traces journalist Karen Hao’s journey from viewing OpenAI as a mission-driven organisation to examining the immense resources, labour, and environmental costs behind the AI industry. Drawing on extensive reporting, she explores OpenAI’s transformation, Sam Altman’s leadership, and the concentration of power shaping AI’s global impact.

AI in Museums. Reflections, Perspectives and Applications
Sonja Thiel / Johannes C. Bernhardt (Eds.)
Bringing together critical perspectives, practical insights, and real-world examples, this book provides a comprehensive overview of how artificial intelligence is reshaping museum practice, from collections management and research to visitor experiences, interpretation, and creative production.

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The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: Principles, Challenges, and Opportunities
Luciano Floridi
This book examines the evolution, ethics, risks, and societal implications of artificial intelligence, arguing that AI represents a novel separation of intelligence from agency and exploring how this new form of agency can be governed and applied to promote human wellbeing, environmental sustainability, and social good.

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The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence
Matteo Pasquinelli
This book offers a social history of artificial intelligence, arguing that AI originates not in attempts to replicate human intelligence but in the automation of labour, social organisation, and surveillance, and calls for a critical understanding of AI as a technology shaped by economic and social relations rather than autonomous intelligence.

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Thinking Back, Making Forward: Artistic Research in Practice
Editors: Brad Haylock, Jessica Wilkinson, Charles Anderson
This edited volume explores how PhD research is reshaping creative disciplines, bringing together artists’ reflections on the benefits, challenges, and broader significance of integrating research into artistic practice and examining its impact on creative work, thinking, and professional development.

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Radical Museums podcast
This Museums Association UK podcast series explores how museums can drive social change through activism, innovation and community engagement. Through conversations with museum professionals across the UK, it examines radical practices that challenge traditional approaches and highlights efforts to make museums more inclusive, relevant and impactful in people's lives.

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Eye On AI
Eye On AI features a podcast with senior researchers and entrepreneurs in the deep learning space. We also offer a weekly newsletter tracking deep-learning academic papers.

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ICOM Podcast Museums And Chill – Designing Regenerative Museums
This ICOM Podcast episode explores how museums can balance technological innovation with the safeguarding of intangible heritage. Through a conversation with Adib Dada, it examines regenerative approaches that go beyond sustainability, considering how museums can strengthen communities, support cultural continuity, and responsibly use new technologies to enhance learning, preservation and engagement.

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MuseumWeek podcast: AI in the Museum: Connecting Futures
This MuseumWeek podcast series explores how AI is transforming museum professions through practical examples and real-world challenges. Covering areas such as content management, audience engagement and data analysis, the episodes highlight opportunities, risks and ethical considerations, while helping museum professionals understand and prepare for AI's growing role in museum work.

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Hard Fork
Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the rapidly changing world of tech.

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Making the Museum
A podcast on exhibition planning for museum leaders, exhibition teams and visitor experience professionals.

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Practical AI
Making artificial intelligence practical, productive & accessible to everyone. Practical AI is a show in which technology professionals, business people, students, enthusiasts, and expert guests engage in lively discussions about Artificial Intelligence and related topics (Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Neural Networks, GANs, MLOps, AIOps, LLMs & more).

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People. Change. Museums.
This 2020 podcast series explores how museums, technology, and overlapping social crises intersect, bringing together international museum professionals to discuss the role of museums in shaping human values and advancing cultural understanding and social justice in a time of uncertainty and change.

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AI Talk (in German and English)
AI Talk is the podcast for anyone who wants to shape Artificial Intelligence — not just follow it. Host Stephan Lendi speaks with top Swiss voices from technology, business, science, and policy to explore how AI is transforming our world. Together with co-host Dalith Steiger-Gablinger of SwissCognitive, AI Talk delivers sharp perspectives and meaningful dialogue for a global innovation audience.

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Nerdland podcast (in Dutch)
Nerdland is the universe in which Lieven Scheire and Hetty Helsmoortel take everyone on a journey to the most fascinating corners of science: through their podcast, books, live shows and, since 2022, the Nerdland Festival too!

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KI verstehen (in German)
Artificial intelligence is revolutionising our everyday lives. It translates texts, filters news, analyses X-rays, and helps determine who gets a job. In the podcast Understanding AI by Deutschlandfunk, questions are answered every week about how to understand, use, and navigate artificial intelligence.

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Non toccare (in Italian)
With a focus on accessibility, the podcast ("Don’t Touch") by Scuola nazionale del patrimonio e delle attività culturali touches, stirs, and reshapes ideas about cultural sites.

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Museums Must Shape AI — Not Simply Adopt It
Published by MuseumWeek, this interview with UNESCO’s Karalyn Monteil argues that museums should actively shape the development of AI rather than simply adopt it. The article highlights AI’s potential to improve accessibility, preservation and engagement, while stressing the importance of ethical governance, cultural rights, data ownership, inclusion, and reducing digital inequalities across the museum sector.

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Enhancing Managerial Efficiency in Museums: a Conceptual Framework for Digital and AI-Driven Platforms
This paper by Zlatina Todorova and Adriyan Dinev presents a framework for improving museum management through digital technologies and AI. It explores how data-driven tools can support audience development, visitor engagement and revenue generation, while enhancing decision-making and operational efficiency. The model offers practical guidance for museums seeking to align innovation with strategic goals and limited resources.

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Technological Innovation in Cultural Organizations: A Review and Conceptual Mapping Framework
This paper by Zornitsa Yordanova and Zlatina Todorova examines how digital technologies, including AI, virtual reality, IoT and big data, are transforming cultural organisations. Using a review of over 90 studies, it introduces a framework for understanding innovation across museum operations, management and networks, offering practical guidance for cultural leaders seeking to balance sustainability, public missions and technological change

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Making Public AI reality: How cultural heritage can lead the way
Published by the Europeana Foundation, this paper argues that cultural heritage institutions can play a key role in building Public AI. It outlines how they can provide trustworthy data, promote fair data reuse, shape transparent and accountable AI systems, and strengthen AI literacy, helping create an AI ecosystem grounded in public values, accountability and cultural diversity.

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Beyond AI and copyright - funding a sustainable information ecosystem 
Published by the Open Future Foundation, this white paper argues that generative AI is reshaping the information ecosystem in ways that risk concentrating control over knowledge and undermining the institutions that sustain it. It advocates public AI infrastructure and a levy on commercial AI systems to support creators, cultural institutions, public-interest media, and the digital knowledge commons.

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AI in Museums and Community Trust: A 2025 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers Data Story 
This visual Data Story, published by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), is based on findings from the 2025 Annual Survey of Museum-Goers, a national survey of US museum visitors from AAM and Wilkening Consulting. Every year, the survey partners with individual museums to research their audiences and yield insights about their behaviors and preferences, both on an institutional and national level.

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Global Center on AI Governance & "Global Index on Responsible AI"
Africa's leading voice in AI policy and governance, working globally to shape fair and inclusive technologies. Their "Global Index on Responsible AI" is built by a global network of 130+ researchers, the Global Index on Responsible AI (GIRAI) provides evidence-based insights into how countries are shaping AI governance, protecting human rights and advancing responsible innovation.

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The true cost of AI romance:  A 4.5-fold increase in emissions in one year
Article by Greenpeace on AI and sustainability or rather the associated carbon emissions

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Fireship
Code tutorials and tech news to help you ship your app faster. New videos every week covering the topics every programmer should know.

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Videos by Andrej Karpathy
Videos on LLMs and AI by the former co-founder of OpenAI, later Director of AI at Tesla, where he led the computer vision team of the Autopilot, then OpenAI again, now Anthropic

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Advancing Digital Transformation in Museums 
The MCN Conference recordings invite viewers to relive talks from previous events.

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MagnificentH
MagnificentH provides infrastructure and community formats that turn audiences into co-curators, giving them access to trusted, connected image archives and the tools to build micro-museums with provenance and attribution. Museums can connect and build using IIIF for storytelling that drives higher audience engagement, community participation, and better discovery. The result: static images or underutilized archives become a living, co-created cultural record — without the cost and complexity of building IIIF infrastructure alone, and with the built-in reach of a shared, growing network. Anna Johansson will present the work of MagnificentH in the session Short Cuts: Museum practice in an AI-shaped world at the NEMO European Museum Conference on Monday 12 October.

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Anne's Substack
Blog by Anne James, one category is Analysis of AI governance, policy, and deployment in galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. I'll break down current policy across the EU, US and Canada, and how cultural institutions should be engaging with AI.

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Dr Oonagh Murphy
Dr Oonagh Murphy's website with resources, posts etc. on the cultural sector and AI (with a focus on the United Kingdom). Oonagh Murphy will contribute to the session Leading the shift: Museums, AI and institutional strategy at the NEMO European Museum Conference on Tuesday 13 October.  

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Ville Tikka
A strategist working across frontier technology, culture, and business. Using social sciences, market intelligence, and design inquiry to rethink what value is and where it comes from.

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The AI Art Magazine
An online magazine with resource on AI and generative art.

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t3n (in German)
German online magazine on digital applications, not limited on AI.

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Cyber for GOOD - Cybersecurity for social and solidarity related stakeholders (in French and Spanish)
Offered by Cyber for GOOD, these free training courses help strengthen cybersecurity awareness and digital resilience among organisations and professionals working in the public interest. Topics include cybersecurity for actors in the social and solidarity economy, as well as protecting independent journalists and regional media from growing digital and cyber threats. Cyber for GOOD's Giulio Zucchini will join the session Under attack: Cybersecurity, trust and resilience in museums at the NEMO European Museum Conference on Monday 12 October.  

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Elements of AI
Creators MinnaLearn and the University of Helsinki want to encourage as broad a group of people as possible to learn what AI is, what can (and can’t) be done with AI, and how to start creating AI methods. The courses combine theory with practical exercises and can be completed at your own pace. Several European language options are available. 

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KI-Campus (in German)
German website with free courses on AI.

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Khronos KI-skole (in Norwegian)
"Online School" for Academics to learn how to use, apply and deal with AI.

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AI4LAM - Artificial Intelligence for Libraries, Archives & Museums
AI4LAM is an international, participatory community focused on advancing the use of artificial intelligence in, for and by libraries, archives and museums.

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Hugging Face
The AI community building the future - A platform where the machine learning community collaborates on models, datasets, and applications.

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Česká asociace umělé inteligence (in Czech)
This nationwide organisation is supporting the development of AI in the Czech Republic. They meaningfully engage the private, public, academic, and nonprofit sectors in opportunities and changes aimed at building a better future for our country.

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Estonian National Museum’s projects on digital cultural heritage
The research projects of the Estonian National Museum support the development and social impact of museums, data-based decision-making, and innovative use of digital collections.

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AiAiSea Project
The AiAiSea Project’s goal was to renew the cooperation between museums in AI-assisted exhibition design, in collaboration with Userix Oy. The project included partial digitalisation of the John Nurminen Foundation’s sea chart collection and the use of this material in AI training and a pilot exhibition.

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AI in the Service of Cultural Heritage
In a joint project between the National Gallery and the Finnish Heritage Agency, AI tools based on image recognition and new working methods are being developed and implemented to improve the accessibility and usability of information related to cultural heritage. 

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The European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage
The Cultural Heritage Cloud or European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH) is a European Union initiative to create a shared digital infrastructure that connects cultural heritage institutions and professionals across the EU. It will provide specific digital collaboration tools for the sector while removing barriers for smaller and more remote institutions. The ECCCH ecosystem brings together a wide range of interconnected projects and initiatives contributing to the development of the Cultural Heritage Cloud. At the centre of the ecosystem is ECHOES, which is responsible for building the foundations and core infrastructure of the Cloud.

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