Livestreams, gatherings, working groups, and more!
Plus our mentorship program, hackathon, a new Responsible Tech Mixer, and some speaker announcements
👋Hey, everyone. Feeling ready to tackle thorny tech & society issues?! Cause that is what we do here at All Tech Is Human—leveraging the collective intelligence of the Responsible Tech community, diversifying those involved in the process, and moving at the speed of tech.
👇On that note, let’s get on with our newsletter! (Summary first, then in detail)
🤯We have three in-person gatherings and three livestreams coming up. All Tech Is Human is bringing an exciting mix of stakeholders together for Responsible Tech DC: A Better Tech Future for Youth on Feb 28 in Washington, a special curated gathering on strengthening the information ecosystem on March 6 in NYC at the Finnish Consulate + Residence, and our Responsible Tech Mixer + Fireside Chat w/ Frank H. McCourt, Jr on March 11. For livestreams, we have Careers in Responsible Tech: Making the Transition this Thursday, This Month in Responsible AI w/ Renée Cummings and Rebekah Tweed on Feb 26, and on March 7th we will be talking about tech-facilitated gender-based violence.
🥳Today we are notifying applicants for our Responsible Tech Mentorship Program, having sifted through 1k applications (see stats below). We’re continuing to grow rapidly, having surpassed 25k followers on LinkedIn—where we post daily, and will be having a major funding announcement next Monday. That coincides with three new hires (!!) we will be announcing shortly, along with currently interviewing for a Senior Full Stack Engineer role.
🌎And we’re continuing to make an impact on the global stage; Founder David Ryan Polgar recently spoke at the United Nations about empowering youth to build a better tech future.
💬At All Tech Is Human, we value our community, creating healthy digital spaces, and building an environment where we can dig into complex, multifaceted, and nuanced tech issues with a focus on bringing the best out of humanity. But that’s not always easy, straightforward, or clean when you are intentionally inclusive and convening so many different people, especially in our rapidly growing Slack community of over 8k members across 89 countries (sign in | apply). We welcome your feedback here, and have also set up virtual and in-person sessions for community suggestions.
🎉Our popular Responsible Tech Mixer + Interview Series returns to NYC on March 11!
If you have visited the Meatpacking District in Manhattan, you may know it is a hot spot for the latest clubs and trends. Our Responsible Tech Mixer + Interview Series has been a packed house since launching last March, with lines wrapping around the block. But they’re not there for a sneaker drop or a new food craze. They are there to meet others who deeply care about co-creating a better tech future.
📕On Mon, March 11th we will be having our latest Responsible Tech Mixer in NYC, which will feature a fireside chat with w/ Frank H. McCourt, Jr about his upcoming book, Our Biggest Fight: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age. He will be in conversation with noted journalist and producer Jennifer Strong.
Frank is a civic entrepreneur and executive chairman of McCourt Global, and also the founder and executive chairman of Project Liberty, a far-reaching effort to build an internet where individuals have control over their data, a voice in how platforms operate, and more access to the economic benefits of innovation.
👋Join us for a conversation about having control over our data and come mingle with 200 people from a broad range of backgrounds who are part of the growing Responsible Tech movement.
🤯Check out the incredible speakers and mix of attendees for our upcoming Responsible Tech DC: A Better Tech Future for Youth.
Here at All Tech Is Human, our superpower is rapidly convening a diverse mix of individuals across civil society, government, industry, and academia.
🤔Why is this important, you ask? Diverse stakeholders are necessary to understand values, best practices, tensions, and trade-offs. Thorny tech and society issues are not solved by growing awareness but through collective understanding and collaboration.
If you’re focused on rolling up your sleeves and working through ways to reduce online harms, elevate healthy digital spaces, and strengthen the field of Trust & Safety, we hope you can join us on Wed, Feb 28 in Washington, DC.
📢2024 Responsible Tech Mentorship Program Updates
Mentee acceptances and waitlist notifications will be going out today, so keep an eye on your inboxes. While you’re waiting, here’s some data from the nearly 1,000 applications we got this year. And be on the lookout for an analysis of the mentorship applications by Sarah Welsh that will be posted on our LinkedIn.
Applications came to us from 63 countries. While most applications were from the United States, England, Canada, Germany, and India, we also had applications from countries like Malaysia, Tanzania, Lesotho, Bhutan, and Peru–the Responsible Tech movement is truly international!
Prospective mentees applied to the program this year primarily to learn how to pivot to Responsible Tech, but many are also actively looking for a new role, are hoping to learn something new, or wanting advice on a project.
Just like in 2023, Ethical AI and Tech Policy were the top two interest areas for mentee and mentor applications: Accessible Design, Public Interest Technology, Product, and Trust & Safety round out the top six interest areas.
🎊We’re thrilled to have had over 175 participants in our curated virtual hackathon: Evaluating Responsible AI Governance Maturity
The hackathon, hosted by TechBetter, led by Ravit Dotan, in partnership with All Tech Is Human and supported by the Notre Dame - IBM Tech Ethics Lab, brought participants together on Jan 31 and Feb 7 to learn how to evaluate companies on the social responsibility of their AI governance using an innovative maturity model based on the NIST AI RMF, and contribute to cutting-edge research to promote the field of AI ethics. The hackathon was held as a part of an interdisciplinary research project to develop a Responsible AI Governance Maturity Model that is rigorous, based on widely accepted resources, and empirically informed.
📅Participants’ analyses and inputs will have a prominent role in shaping the model. Hackathon results will be announced on Monday, February 26th, and in the coming weeks, watch for an All Tech Is Human report showcasing hackathon participants, their submissions, and significant takeaways.
⭐Trust & Safety is a key area of focus at All Tech Is Human
If you are involved in Trust & Safety or looking to grow in the field, our non-profit has numerous ways to participate:
Attend an upcoming livestream (here is one about building your career in Trust & Safety)
Apply to our Trust & Safety working group
Read our Responsible Tech Guide and other reports that have interviewed dozens of leaders in Trust & Safety
Check out resources from other Trust & Safety organizations in our Responsible Tech Org List 2024
Join an upcoming in-person gathering, where Trust & Safety is front and center
Take part in our Responsible Tech Mentorship Program (as a mentee or mentor)
Peruse our Trust & Safety knowledge hub (which will be greatly expanded by our working group)
Check out our Responsible Tech Job Board (and filter for Trust & Safety roles), and join our Responsible Tech Talent Pool
Join our curated roundtables related to Trust & Safety. In December, we held one with Ofcom and also the Oversight Board while in London.
🗒️You can always find all of our projects and links here.
😎No matter where you are located, there are a ton of ways for you to get involved in the Responsible Tech movement! Our organization loves to elevate the work of others, promoting a culture of knowledge-sharing and collaboration that benefits all.
In our latest Cool Happenings in Responsible Tech, we have submissions from the TSPA, the Blockchain Law for Social Good Center, and Prime Produce Apprentice Cooperative about a new book brunch series. Check them out.
🤔Know of a resource, project, or upcoming event we should highlight? Reach out to Sandra Khalil from our team.
👋Looking to pivot into Responsible Tech?! Join our livestream! On Feb 22 at 1pm EST, we’ll discuss this with four mentorship program participants (both mentors and mentees) who have pivoted to different careers in Responsible Tech! Join Kyle Boerstler, PhD (Senior Data Scientist, Activision), Elizabeth Thompson (MS Data Science @ NC State | Researcher @ UNC), Daniel Siegel (AI & Malicious Actor Analyst, Stealth), and Megan Shahi (Director, Technology Policy at Center for American Progress).
🗣️Tune in Thursday, February 22nd, at 9am EST to catch Rebekah Tweed on a panel on "Balancing AI innovation with ethics in government" hosted by Apolitical, a social learning platform used by 200,000+ public servants and policymakers from 170 countries, as part of their Government AI Campus, an initiative to provide 10,000 public servants with the education and skills to lead in the age of AI.
👍Join our livestream on Mon, Feb 26 at 1pm ET for This Month in Responsible AI, a new series that features our Senior Fellow, noted AI ethicist Renée Cummings!
💻The UN’s Secretary-General's Envoy on Technology, Amandeep Singh Gill, will be speaking at our upcoming March 6th gathering in NYC about strengthening the information ecosystem. Read about it here.
📆We are discussing the Current State of Tech-Facilitated and Enabled Gender-Based Violence for a livestream on Thurs, March 7 at 4pm ET that will feature Sudeshna Mukherjee, Nakshathra Suresh, and moderator Sandra Khalil.
📰Rebekah Tweed, our Executive Director, recently spoke at CUNY’s Graduate Center about Public Interest Technology careers, which was covered in this post-event article. Learn about all the work we are doing in PIT here.
🎙️Matt Soeth, our Head of Trust & Safety + Global Affairs, was interviewed on Lisa Thee’s Go! Reboot Your Life Podcast about aligning passion with profession. Listen here.
🗳️David Ryan Polgar, Founder & President, was quoted in The Guardian (AI and misinformation: what’s ahead for social media as the US election looms?):
“What we’re really realizing is that the gulf between innovation, which is rapidly increasing, and our consideration, our ability as a society to come together to understand best practices, norms of behavior, what we should do, what should be new legislation – that’s still moving painfully slow.”
🎊Our All Tech Is Human affiliates continue to do incredible work throughout the Responsible Tech ecosystem. Nadah Feteih led a discussion at BKC’s Institute for Rebooting Social Media around supporting marginalized Trust & Safety workers, Belle Torek recently joined the Human Rights Campaign as a Senior Fellow for Tech Advocacy & LGBTQ+ Inclusion, Daniella Esi Darlington just participated in a discussion around the UN Global Digital Compact, Chris McClean now has a video series around our relationship with AI, Karolle Rabarison helped launch a new AI in Journalism Initiative, Arushi Saxena presented at the University of Southern California about Responsible AI in Business, Ava Smithing reflected on being at the recent US Senate child safety hearings, and Jason Steinhauer is traveling to Kosovo to be a keynote speaker at the Balkan Disinformation Summit!
🌵Are you going to be at SXSW this year? Do say hello to Sarah Welsh from our team (based in Austin), and our Siegel Research Fellow Sara M. Watson.
📚Back on October 31, 2023, we helped organize the book launch for Dr. Joy Buolamwini (Unmasking AI) that was held at Ford Foundation in NYC. This discussion, featuring moderator Sinead Bovell, recently ran on C-SPAN’s Book TV!
🥳Kristen Nemeth, a member of our Slack community, put together a community gathering in Chicago recently. There was also a recent independently organized gathering in Philly and many more discussions for meetups all across the globe!
📜Last month we released our Responsible Tech Org List 2024, which is continuing to be downloaded by a broad range of individuals across the globe. If you haven’t read it yet, you can find it here.
✍️Did you know that All Tech Is Human is building out five working groups (around our key areas of focus), along with an education working group to elevate our community resources? Get involved here.
📃Elisa Fox from our team wrote about our key takeaways from our recent Responsible Tech London gathering, along with the roundtables we held with Ofcom and the Oversight Board. Key takeaways from panels at the gathering (Reducing Harms Against Children, How Will the Online Safety Act Influence the Internet?) include:
Establish shared values and goals to measure success as well as unintended consequences
Urgent need to expand understanding outside a Western context
Safety requires a multi-pronged approach
👋Together, we work to solve tech and society’s thorniest issues.
-All Tech Is Human | Drop us an email today
💡 Have an idea for a project together? Fill out our form and let us know!
⭐ See all of our projects, including upcoming summits and mixers, knowledge hubs, our previous reports, working groups, affiliates, Responsible Tech University Network, mentorship program, livestreams, job board, community Slack group, Responsible Tech Guide, our talent matchmaking service, our Responsible Tech Talent Pool, 600+ Responsible Tech Org List, Tekalo (matchmaking for social impact) and much more.
🦜Looking to talk with others in Responsible Tech after reading our newsletter? Join the conversations happening on our Slack (sign in | apply).
🙏 Feeling generous? Help All Tech Is Human grow with a donation! Or if you are part of a foundation that can support our mission, reach out directly to Founder & President David Ryan Polgar.