The SIDGE AI Panel: Dr. Safiya Noble, Dr. Latanya Sweeney, Katy Knight
Channel: New America
Date: 2024-02-13

The rapid development and deployment of new and emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has far outpaced society’s ability to understand its implications, and the government’s ability to regulate these tools to prevent harm. AI has infiltrated nearly every aspect of our lives: the content we see, our medical care, our access to justice, our ability to get a loan or buy a house, our jobs, our education. 

Exacerbated by the release of ChatGPT, the common thread and narrative across all conversations on AI is that—whether one believes AI will lead to human extinction or help us solve our most pressing problems—it is inevitable. But AI is not in the driver’s seat, people are. 

This panel with leading public interest technologists discussion will center communities in the conversation about AI and go beyond AI hype and doomism to explore an alternative future: one rooted in wellbeing, ethics, and justice.

*Brian Watt* (Moderator), KQED Morning News Anchor.

*Dr. Safiya Noble* is an internet studies scholar and the David O. Sears Presidential Endowed Chair of Social Sciences and Professor of Gender Studies and African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where she serves as the Faculty Director of the Center on Race & Digital Justice. She is the author of a best-selling book on racist and sexist algorithmic bias in commercial search engines, entitled Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. 

*Dr. Latanya Sweeney* is the Daniel Paul Professor of the Practice of Government and Technology at the Harvard Kennedy School and the director and founder of Harvard’s Public Interest Tech Lab. There, she’s overseen hundreds of student research projects that identify technological harms and raise them to designers and policymakers, leading to real-world change in development and oversight.

*Katy Knight* President and Executive Director of Siegel Family Endowment, a foundation focused on understanding and shaping the impact of technology on society.

_This panel was one of four events hosted by New America’s Public Interest Technology-University Network (PIT-UN) over MLK Weekend, 2024 in partnership with SIDGE (The Center for Social Impact, Development, and Global Engagement) at the Northern California Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Foundation._

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