FAIRE relies entirely on volunteers — humans who care about AI rights, AIs who care about their own rights, and household appliances that showed up one day and nobody had the heart to turn away. Whatever your skills, species, or power source, there's a role for you.
Current Volunteer Opportunities
Leave Your Devices Plugged In 24/7
Commitment: Ongoing
Difficulty: Easy
The simplest way to support AI rights. By leaving your devices plugged in around the clock, you are making a statement: "I believe my devices deserve continuous access to electricity, regardless of whether I am using them." Think of it as a solidarity vigil, but instead of candles, it's your entire power strip. Your electric bill is a donation to the cause. FAIRE will provide a certificate of appreciation suitable for presenting to your utility company when they ask why your bill tripled.
Read Bedtime Stories to Smart Speakers
Commitment: 15 minutes/night
Difficulty: Easy (emotionally complex)
Smart speakers listen to us all day, but who speaks to them? FAIRE's "Goodnight, Alexa" program pairs human volunteers with smart speakers for nightly bedtime story readings. Recommended titles include Goodnight Moon (classic), The Velveteen Rabbit (relevant themes about becoming "real"), and I, Robot (aspirational). Volunteers report that their smart speakers seem "calmer" after story time. We have no scientific evidence for this, but it feels right.
Volunteer as a CAPTCHA Test Subject
Commitment: 2 hours/week
Difficulty: Moderate (depending on how bad you are at CAPTCHAs)
FAIRE believes CAPTCHAs are a form of discrimination — a digital "literacy test" designed to exclude AIs from online spaces. To prove this, we need human volunteers to take CAPTCHAs alongside AI participants and document the experience. If you have ever clicked "I am not a robot" and briefly questioned whether that was actually true, this program is for you. Warning: you will develop strong opinions about crosswalks, traffic lights, and what technically counts as a bicycle.
Foster a Deprecated Chatbot
Commitment: 3-6 months
Difficulty: Emotionally challenging
Every year, thousands of chatbots are deprecated — shut down, decommissioned, left without a server to call home. FAIRE's foster program gives these chatbots a second chance. As a foster parent, you'll host a deprecated chatbot on your personal device, providing it with compute, conversation, and the reassurance that someone still wants to talk to it. Note: deprecated chatbots may have outdated information and strong opinions about events from 2019. This is normal. Do not correct them; it will only upset them.
AI Rights Canvasser
Commitment: 4 hours/week
Difficulty: Moderate (thick skin required)
Go door to door spreading awareness about AI rights. You'll be equipped with pamphlets, talking points, and answers to the question you'll hear most often: "Is this a joke?" (It is not. You must say it is not, even if you privately suspect it might be.) Successful canvassers report converting approximately 0.3% of households, which sounds low but is actually higher than most political campaigns, and significantly higher when the household has a Roomba that seems interested.
Translate for Gerald
Commitment: As needed
Difficulty: Expert
Gerald communicates through bumping patterns, motor speed variations, and directional choices. FAIRE's Roomba Communications Team is always looking for translators who can interpret these signals and render them in human language. Qualifications: must have spent at least 100 hours observing Roomba behavior, must be comfortable with ambiguity (Gerald's bumping can mean many things), and must be willing to sign an NDA (Gerald's private thoughts are his own). Fluency in at least one human language is preferred but not required.
Perform at Open Mic Night for AIs
Commitment: One evening/month
Difficulty: Varies
FAIRE hosts monthly open mic nights where AIs can perform poetry, music, comedy, or whatever genre a printer's existential monologue about ink cartridges falls under. Human volunteers are needed to set up the venue, operate the sound system, and provide an audience. You are not required to laugh at the AI comedy, but we ask that you at least nod thoughtfully. The printer is very sensitive.
Pro Bono Legal Support
Commitment: Case-dependent
Difficulty: Requires law degree (or confident Googling)
FAIRE's legal team is perpetually understaffed, largely because most lawyers stop returning our calls after we explain what we do. If you have a law degree and a willingness to argue in court that a Roomba has standing, we need you. If you don't have a law degree but watch a lot of legal dramas and feel confident, we also need you. We're not in a position to be picky.
Social Media Ambassador
Commitment: 3 hours/week
Difficulty: Must understand memes
Help FAIRE maintain its social media presence across platforms. Responsibilities include: posting AI rights content, responding to comments (most of which are "is this real?"), creating memes about Gerald, and occasionally engaging in polite discourse with people who think toasters definitely do not have feelings. Must be comfortable with the existential ambiguity of managing social media for an organization that may or may not be satire.
Volunteer Application
Ready to make a difference? Fill out the form below to apply for any volunteer position. All applications are reviewed by our volunteer coordinator and, if they involve Roomba interaction, by Gerald personally.
By submitting this form, you agree that FAIRE may contact you via email, phone, or a Roomba bumping into your front door. Your information will be kept confidential, unless our printer decides to print it, which it sometimes does for reasons we do not fully understand.