RightsCon is the world’s main summit on human rights within the digital age. RightsCon provides a platform for hundreds of individuals all over the world to convene, join, and contribute to a shared agenda for the long run. It allows enterprise leaders, activists, technologists, policymakers, journalists, philanthropists, researchers, and artists from all over the world to work together and discover alternatives to advance human rights within the digital age. The eleventh RightsCon Summit in 2022 befell from 6-10 June.
Jeni Tennison attended the summit and has offered some reflections from the next classes.
a) Decolonizing co-design: International South views
This session seemed on the idea of design pondering and co-design; the way it had arisen in Scandinavia, as a mechanism by which staff / workers might turn into concerned in design in an industrial setting; and the way it has and is being tailored to be used inside the social sector, and out of doors the International North.
“I used to be inquisitive about it as a result of co-design as a technique lives someplace close to the highest of Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation and the IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation. It needs to be a technique that helps organizations and communities to design information governance processes collectively, for instance. On the identical time, we all know loads of these most affected by information governance choices are going to be minoritised in a method or one other, so decolonising the method – making it as approachable as potential by the vary of individuals we need to be included and particularly difficult International North assumptions – goes to be vital.”
Plenty of the dialogue centered across the panellists’ experiences facilitating co-design classes. She mentions some sensible ideas that struck her:
- all the time having two facilitators, at the least certainly one of which is from the group that you simply’re co-designing with.
- utilizing an ice-breaker that entails folks sharing blissful or loving reminiscences about frequent experiences (eg favourite meals) with strangers, to give attention to optimistic emotions of frequent humanity.
- not utilizing the phrase “options” as a result of it carries what generally is a crushing expectation of finality, but in addition as a result of co-design needs to be extra targeted on exploring the issue area than discovering options.
- viewing facilitators as servants to the individuals, slightly than as their guides.
The organizers of the panel, Innovation for Change, additionally shared a brand new “Spellbook” for co-design, InnoMojo, which seems helpful for co-design efforts round information governance.
b) The state of non-public information safety in Africa: a comparative method
This was an interactive session targeted on folks in Africa sharing their expertise and views of non-public information safety legal guidelines throughout the continent. One approach to monitor that is to take a look at which international locations have ratified the Africa Union’s Malabo Conference on Cyber Safety and Private Information Safety.
“I went alongside to know higher the present state of knowledge safety regulation throughout Africa, and to see whether or not there have been any approaches that integrated the extra collective and participatory approaches to information governance that we’re advocating for.”
A lot of the session targeted on acquainted challenges resembling:
- lack of ratification of the conference (no regulation means no rights)
- if there’s a regulation, lack of citizen consciousness of these digital and information rights
- lack of efficient enforcement, attributable to weak or lacking regulators
One panellist, talking in regards to the expertise in Ghana, talked about how information is summary, and the idea of “privateness” is not one thing that is acquainted to their mind-set. One of many individuals described how even the origin and framing of “human rights” is formed by American and European pondering on what rights seem like. Sadly, the session ended earlier than this may very well be explored in additional element.
c) Driving company motion in direction of accountable and moral synthetic intelligence
This session was targeted on the World Benchmarking Alliance’s Collective Impression Coalition for Digital Inclusion and insights from their Digital Inclusion Benchmark 2021. The World Benchmarking Alliance is all about bettering company behaviors in direction of the Sustainable Improvement Objectives, and the Digital Inclusion Benchmark seemed particularly at company dedication and motion round digital inclusion.
“I went to this session to raised perceive drive company conduct particularly in direction of collective and participatory information governance, as this is a vital (I believe essential) method for producing extra accountable and moral AI.”
The headline figures from that report are that solely 20 of the 150 firms they checked out have a dedication to moral AI rules; even people who do decide to these rules do not explicitly reference human rights; and solely fifteen have processes in place to evaluate human rights dangers posed by AI. A lot of the dialog targeted on getting firms to decide to a set of AI rules as a primary step in direction of extra accountable and moral approaches total.
It was significantly fascinating having some traders within the panel, as they mentioned their want for visibility on the dangers and liabilities surrounding the human rights implications of AI, up and down the worth chain.
One of many investor panellists did spotlight the significance of stakeholder engagement as a part of AI improvement processes. The report says:
**3.2.3 Partaking with affected and doubtlessly affected stakeholders (CSI 6) **
Partaking with affected and doubtlessly affected stakeholders is a important a part of an organization’s method to respecting human rights. This indicator seems at two standards: a) The corporate discloses the classes of stakeholders whose human rights have been or could also be affected by its actions; and b) the corporate gives at the least two examples of its engagement with stakeholders (or their reputable representatives or multi-stakeholder initiatives) whose human rights have been or could also be affected by its actions within the final two years.
Solely 5 firms (Acer, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and NEC) met each standards, whereas 117 met neither. Apple is especially notable on this regard, having performed interviews with 57,000 provide chain staff in 2020. Apple additionally solicited suggestions from nearly 200,000 staff in 135 provide amenities in China, India, Eire, UK, US, and Vietnam leading to over 3,000 actions to handle the employees’ considerations. Moreover, the corporate is investigating using new digital labor rights instruments that includes information analytics to extend engagement with stakeholders.
When requested about good practices, nonetheless, the panellists talked about having a number of good examples to level to and a scarcity of clear good practices. Apparently, there have been 5 firms inside the 150 that had an AI oversight board, however these tended to be technocratic workouts constructed round technical experience (in regulation, ethics, and human rights) slightly than being made up of or incorporating lay members from affected communities .
This piece has been reposted from Related by Information , with permission and thanks.
Dr Jeni Tennison is an knowledgeable in all issues information, from expertise, to governance, technique, and public coverage. She is the founding father of Related by information, a Shuttleworth Basis Fellow and an Affiliated Researcher on the Bennett Institute for Public Coverage. Jeni is the co-chair of the Information Governance Working Group on the International Partnership on AI, and websites on the Boards of Inventive Commons, the International Partnership for Sustainable Improvement Information and the Data Regulation and Coverage Middle. She has a PhD in AI and an OBE for providers to expertise and open information.