CADE Tech Policy Workshop
Nov 16 and Nov 17, 2019
Abstracts
Nov 16 and Nov 17, 2019
Abstracts
Building Empathy in Tech: A Critical Component for an Ethical Industry
Catherine Bracy, TechEquity Collaborative
As more and more consequences of the “move fast and break things” era of the Internet come to light, tech companies are under enormous pressure to anticipate the potential negative impacts of their tools and platforms. But, when the companies who are building these tools are so isolated from the communities they are impacting, how can we expect this ethical decision-making paradigm to take root? In this talk, I argue that in order for the tech industry to become more ethical, the people who design and build tech tools, platforms and business models must gain greater exposure to the wider world. We’ll explore one example of how tech workers are getting out of the building and the impacts that engaging in tech’s own backyard can have not only for the local economy but for the mindset of the tech industry.
New Challenges for Regulation
Guillaume Chaslot, Algo Transparency
As Artificial Intelligence outperforms humans at an increasing number of task, new regulation challenges arise. In the past decades, there have been many speculations on what AI will be able to achieve, many of which were overblown. Before regulating AI, we need to understand how it operates. What are the actual dangers of AI, and how can we prevent them?
Deconstructing the Surveillance State
Rumman Chowdhury, Accenture
The smart city has become co-opted by an exclusionary narrative that enables a surveillance state. In this talk, I'll present the global imperative to deconstruct the current surveillance state by illustrating already-existing harms. In it's place, I present a vision of Digital Urban Design, which presents a community-driven and collaborative smart city. A work in progress, the goal of digital urban design is to evolve the field of urban design to merge the digital and analog fabrics in a way that impacts and improves the lives of citizens.
(Dis)Information & Regulation
Renee DiResta, Mozilla Fellow in Misinformation, Media and Trust
This talk will survey proposed regulatory approaches to addressing the range of challenges in the information environment, looking at regulatory proposals around ads, antitrust, and privacy, and how these proposed laws impact the privacy-security-free expression balance.
A filter and a spotlight: Technology and Mass Atrocity
Y-Vonne Hutchinson, CEO ReadySet
Technology, especially social media, has made us better at mobilizing, attention grabbing, and targeting; It has done this with a scale and coherence rarely seen before, resulting in tragic consequences. In our online communities, we all see the same videos, hear the same arguments, and can quickly be mobilized to respond in the same way; within an incredibly short period of time. This talk examines the connection between the culture of social media companies and the violent real-world impact they sometimes have.
The Influence of Surveillance Tech Companies on Democratic Policing
Elizabeth Joh, UC Davis School of Law
Conventional wisdom assumes that the police are in control of their investigative tools. But with surveillance technologies, this is not always the case. Increasingly, police departments are consumers of surveillance technologies that are created, sold, and controlled by private companies. These surveillance technology companies exercise an undue influence over the police today in ways that aren’t widely acknowledged, but that have enormous consequences for civil liberties and police oversight.
Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency: Lessons from predictive models in criminal justice
Kristian Lum, Human Rights Data Analysis Group
The related topics of fairness, accountability, and transparency in predictive modeling have seen increased attention over the last several years. One application area where these topics are particularly important is criminal justice. In this talk, I will give an overview of my work in this area— spanning a critical look at predictive policing algorithms to the role of police discretion in pre-trial risk assessment models to a look behind the scenes at how risk assessment models are created in practice. Through these examples, I hope to demonstrate the importance of each of these concepts in predictive modeling in general and in the criminal justice system in particular.
Hypervisibilizing the unseen: Dominant narratives, smart cities and race-blind tech policies
Tawana Petty, Detroit Community Technology Project
If you teach the world to fear the other, individualization and hyper surveillance become inevitable. Detroit is an incredible example of how the power of propaganda became a toolkit for race-blind policies with racist consequences, data and tech misuse, digital surveillance and the dangerous conflation between safety and security. “Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid,” is no longer just the tagline from a classic movie, it’s become a mantra for being and an excuse not to see each other.
Diverse Faces, Diverse Lenses: Applied ethics and facial recognition research
Irina Raicu, Director of the Internet Ethics Program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
Ethical issues are like birds: they are pervasive, varied, and often go unnoticed (especially by those not trained to identify them). Ethical "lenses" (or approaches) can help us see them. This presentation will introduce the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics "Framework for Ethical Decision-Making," which features five ethical lenses. Attendees will then work together to apply those lenses to a case study that reflects the complexity of ethical decisions faced by practitioners who work with data.
Ethics, tech policy, and the internet, oh my!
Chris Riley, Mozilla
Larry Lessig famously coined the expression "code is law" to describe how engineering decisions shape the technology ecosystem and the ways that users and businesses interact through technology. I like to add "but law is law, too". The internet's halcyon days are over, and governments around the world seek to shape its future. Public policy is our lens for engaging with them, and pushing for ethical outcomes through changes to laws and regulations. This talk will give an overview of the many dimensions of internet policy in 2019, and what "good" outcomes for the future of the internet look like.
Catherine Bracy, TechEquity Collaborative
As more and more consequences of the “move fast and break things” era of the Internet come to light, tech companies are under enormous pressure to anticipate the potential negative impacts of their tools and platforms. But, when the companies who are building these tools are so isolated from the communities they are impacting, how can we expect this ethical decision-making paradigm to take root? In this talk, I argue that in order for the tech industry to become more ethical, the people who design and build tech tools, platforms and business models must gain greater exposure to the wider world. We’ll explore one example of how tech workers are getting out of the building and the impacts that engaging in tech’s own backyard can have not only for the local economy but for the mindset of the tech industry.
New Challenges for Regulation
Guillaume Chaslot, Algo Transparency
As Artificial Intelligence outperforms humans at an increasing number of task, new regulation challenges arise. In the past decades, there have been many speculations on what AI will be able to achieve, many of which were overblown. Before regulating AI, we need to understand how it operates. What are the actual dangers of AI, and how can we prevent them?
Deconstructing the Surveillance State
Rumman Chowdhury, Accenture
The smart city has become co-opted by an exclusionary narrative that enables a surveillance state. In this talk, I'll present the global imperative to deconstruct the current surveillance state by illustrating already-existing harms. In it's place, I present a vision of Digital Urban Design, which presents a community-driven and collaborative smart city. A work in progress, the goal of digital urban design is to evolve the field of urban design to merge the digital and analog fabrics in a way that impacts and improves the lives of citizens.
(Dis)Information & Regulation
Renee DiResta, Mozilla Fellow in Misinformation, Media and Trust
This talk will survey proposed regulatory approaches to addressing the range of challenges in the information environment, looking at regulatory proposals around ads, antitrust, and privacy, and how these proposed laws impact the privacy-security-free expression balance.
A filter and a spotlight: Technology and Mass Atrocity
Y-Vonne Hutchinson, CEO ReadySet
Technology, especially social media, has made us better at mobilizing, attention grabbing, and targeting; It has done this with a scale and coherence rarely seen before, resulting in tragic consequences. In our online communities, we all see the same videos, hear the same arguments, and can quickly be mobilized to respond in the same way; within an incredibly short period of time. This talk examines the connection between the culture of social media companies and the violent real-world impact they sometimes have.
The Influence of Surveillance Tech Companies on Democratic Policing
Elizabeth Joh, UC Davis School of Law
Conventional wisdom assumes that the police are in control of their investigative tools. But with surveillance technologies, this is not always the case. Increasingly, police departments are consumers of surveillance technologies that are created, sold, and controlled by private companies. These surveillance technology companies exercise an undue influence over the police today in ways that aren’t widely acknowledged, but that have enormous consequences for civil liberties and police oversight.
Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency: Lessons from predictive models in criminal justice
Kristian Lum, Human Rights Data Analysis Group
The related topics of fairness, accountability, and transparency in predictive modeling have seen increased attention over the last several years. One application area where these topics are particularly important is criminal justice. In this talk, I will give an overview of my work in this area— spanning a critical look at predictive policing algorithms to the role of police discretion in pre-trial risk assessment models to a look behind the scenes at how risk assessment models are created in practice. Through these examples, I hope to demonstrate the importance of each of these concepts in predictive modeling in general and in the criminal justice system in particular.
Hypervisibilizing the unseen: Dominant narratives, smart cities and race-blind tech policies
Tawana Petty, Detroit Community Technology Project
If you teach the world to fear the other, individualization and hyper surveillance become inevitable. Detroit is an incredible example of how the power of propaganda became a toolkit for race-blind policies with racist consequences, data and tech misuse, digital surveillance and the dangerous conflation between safety and security. “Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid,” is no longer just the tagline from a classic movie, it’s become a mantra for being and an excuse not to see each other.
Diverse Faces, Diverse Lenses: Applied ethics and facial recognition research
Irina Raicu, Director of the Internet Ethics Program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
Ethical issues are like birds: they are pervasive, varied, and often go unnoticed (especially by those not trained to identify them). Ethical "lenses" (or approaches) can help us see them. This presentation will introduce the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics "Framework for Ethical Decision-Making," which features five ethical lenses. Attendees will then work together to apply those lenses to a case study that reflects the complexity of ethical decisions faced by practitioners who work with data.
Ethics, tech policy, and the internet, oh my!
Chris Riley, Mozilla
Larry Lessig famously coined the expression "code is law" to describe how engineering decisions shape the technology ecosystem and the ways that users and businesses interact through technology. I like to add "but law is law, too". The internet's halcyon days are over, and governments around the world seek to shape its future. Public policy is our lens for engaging with them, and pushing for ethical outcomes through changes to laws and regulations. This talk will give an overview of the many dimensions of internet policy in 2019, and what "good" outcomes for the future of the internet look like.