NEW report! Co-Creating a Better Tech Future
Plus our interview with Frances Haugen, upcoming NYC mixer, new list of over 500 Responsible Tech organizations, tackling online gender-based violence, and more
🥳Today we’re releasing our new report around understanding community values, concerns, and ways to align our tech future with the public interest!
Yes, you read that right! A surprise report drop on Co-Creating a Better Tech Future. Remember when Beyoncé did her surprise album drop at midnight in 2013? We do. So it may seem like déjà vu since our updated Responsible Tech Guide came out just two months ago, but it’s time to ring the alarm and get in formation for this irreplaceable look into how collective action and understanding will run the world!
The reason why we’re excited is because we’re doing something different here at All Tech Is Human—we’re listening, not just speaking (read about the volunteers who assisted on this project). Our organization deeply believes that if you’re impacted by technology, you deserve a voice into how it is designed, developed, and deployed. No application without representation, not about us without us.
Since 2018, we have been tirelessly working on a new model that is heavily participatory and interconnected, weaving together multiple stakeholders, disciplines, and perspectives so we can truly co-create a tech future that is aligned with the public interest (see our list of over 400 previous interviewees). This allows for ideas and power to circulate. People and ideas need to have pathways to levers of change, which is what we have been building. It’s pretty unique, really.
Our new report features dozens of new perspectives we gathered from a wide range of individuals, along with learnings gleaned from our recent podcast series with Unfinished, our Responsible Tech Guide, AI & Human Rights report, Improving Social Media report, and our HX report. We also glean insight from our mixers, large community Slack group (which is turning into a social network for the Responsible Tech community), and more. (Find all links here)
😎Change ain’t happening through a top-down approach, people. That is far too slow, and includes only a small sliver of society and it also focuses on one-way communication. That doesn’t work for the problems we face. So we’ve developed a system that is agile enough to move at the speed of tech, include far more voices in the process, and affect positive change. Download our new report and let us know what you think!
📺 Watch our interview with Frances Haugen, noted advocate for greater transparency and accountability of social media.
Also, check out the white paper for her new non-profit (Beyond the Screen), and its initiative around Duty of Care. You can find that in this blog post that also features a podcast version of our interview with Frances and select quotes about her vision for a better tech future.
“I have always said any solution that is dependent on me is a solution that is doomed... that the real problem…the anchor problem that led to all these downstream consequences was not enough different kinds of people were sitting at the table…Our goal, like what I view as success, is if we could have a million people in the world who could have a conversation about the tradeoffs in social media — the design of these systems, the significance of different choices at a level of competency that was similar to mine — that would be success. Because I don't believe any solution that involves a couple hundred people scattered around the world can ever be authentically democratic. And so we're going to keep working to bring more and more people to the table to be effective commentators, to be effective as inventors.” -Frances Haugen is an interview with All Tech Is Human’s David Ryan Polgar
🎉We had a wonderful gathering of passionate people committed to building a better tech future at our Responsible Tech Mixer in DC!
If you are ever feeling pessimistic about our future, it is time for you to attend one of our in-person mixers. The energy is palpable, as you will be left with the feeling that there are countless individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives that are rolling up their proverbial sleeves and committing themselves to tackling wicked problems. A big thank you to Alex Reed for helping set up this gathering and also for taking the photos that you see above.
While much of the media attention tends to focus around the awareness that there is a “tech problem,” our mixers draw the next-stage community that are working on collective action to understand values, trade-offs, and pathways towards improvement. We know there is a problem. But we’re not interested in scoring points (too easy), we’re interested in changing the game. That’s the hard part.
So as our organization heads into 2023, we are actively looking into additional ways to expand our reach (All Tech Is Human is based in NYC) with additional gatherings to grow and improve the Responsible Tech ecosystem so we can tackle thorny tech & society issues. Do you have an idea for us? Share it with us!
👋We rented out a rooftop in Manhattan to bring together 250 people for our mixer to celebrate our new report, celebrate the community, and focus on Tech & Democracy!
So this is going to be big. Since all of our recent gatherings have quickly reached capacity, we went out and found a bigger space for our upcoming in-person Responsible Tech Mixer in NYC on Wed, November 30th. Come join 249 other individuals in Responsible Tech at the rooftop location we rented out in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. We’re excited, and hope you can join us.
We are lining up individuals from other organizations in the Responsible Tech ecosystem to jump on the microphone and let everyone know about their activities and how others can get involved. It’s a celebration, and a key moment to connect with others across civil society, government, industry, and academia that deeply care about charting a path forward.
The theme of Tech & Democracy is also our current working group (run by Cate Gwin from our team), which will be releasing its report on Feb 28, 2023 followed by a summit in NYC. Do you have suggestions for who should be profiled in this report? Let us know through this form.
👕Oh, and we’ll be giving away a few of our brand new t-shirts.
🚀We just launched a sortable and ever-growing list of 500 Responsible Tech Organizations!
With the recent hiring of Sandra Khalil, we have been busy improving our knowledge management so we can constantly share with the community valuable insight and resources. Our goal was always to take the information found in our Responsible Tech Guide (first released in Sept 2020) and bring it to life so you can quickly find organizations based on topic areas and location. For inclusion to our curated list, we focus on the structure of the organization (social purpose, non-profit), topic areas of focus, ability to get involved with the organization, and the level of work the organization is producing.
👩💻We’ve been curating Responsible Tech jobs and understanding new career paths and skills since 2020. Check out our new listings.
There are three key workstreams that our non-profit focuses on: multistakeholder convening & community-building, multidisciplinary education, and filling the traditional tech pipeline with more backgrounds, disciplines, and lived experiences. Directly related to expanding pathways for values-aligned individuals to work in the Responsible Tech field, we have a job board, mentorship program, talent pool, and talent matchmaking service for employers. For questions about these programs, ping Rebekah Tweed from our team. You can find all of our links here.
Our hearts go out to those affected by the recent layoffs in the tech industry. We are agnostic about our job listings, believing that positive change happens through a combination of work from the inside, pressure and research on the outside, and from roles reimagining our tech future. That means you’ll find roles from major tech companies, startups, universities, think tanks, advocacy group, and more. New listings include:
TikTok - Machine Learning Engineer, Trustworthy Recommendation System
Airbnb - Senior Privacy Manager
Apple - NLP Core Technology, ML Engineer - Safety AI
Discord - Exploitative Content Specialist
Sony AI - Research Scientist (Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning)
Twilio - Staff Product Manager, Trusted Communications
Reddit - Software Engineer, Safety Signals
Roblox - Engineering Manager, Account Integrity
TikTok - Responsible Innovation Lead, Platform Inclusion & Fairness
Stanford University - Deputy Director, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI)
University of Virginia School of Data Science - Multiple faculty roles
Tech Talent Project - Entrepreneur in Residence and Director, Tech in Service
Data & Society Research Institute - Policy Director
🤳What are adults missing about understanding teen tech use?! Turns out a lot. We had a livestream with two leading researchers to explore the issue.
Carrie James and Emily Weinstein are Principal Investigators at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where they have worked for over a decade leading research about youth and technology. Their projects focus on the ways social media shapes adolescents’ everyday lives, including well-being, civic participation, ethics, and family life. They are also the authors of the new book, Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (And Adults Are Missing), which details new insights from research with thousands of teens.
We went deep with this livestream, digging into the complexity of teen tech use where everyone is trying to find a balance with reducing harms while also ensuring youth empowerment. You can watch the discussion above!
👍Let’s promote knowledge-sharing & collaboration to help reduce online gender-based violence.
Following an online gathering we held alongside the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) that brought together a range of individuals interested/working to reduce online gender-based violence, we will be holding an in-person workshop + mixer in NYC on Tues, Dec 6th from 4-7pm in collaboration with Consumer Reports, the Web Foundation, Superbloom, and more.
Would you like to be involved with this tailored gathering to connect, learn, and share resources? Let us know.
🤯Let’s get meta
A lot of people have commented to us about how they get a lot of value and positivity from our open community Slack group. This is wonderful! Our community on Slack has rapidly grown to over 4k members across the globe, and brings together a lot of backgrounds that would often have a lot of disagreement about the best ways to tackle current tech & society issues. 🤔With so many people who may disagree with each other, why is there such a high level of civility on our Slack?
Because underneath the disagreement about the causes and the best course of action is a deeper foundational agreement around a mission: to have a future that respects our rights, promotes connectivity, and values our wellbeing. So no matter one’s location or background, there is an undercurrent in a unified direction. We’re all in the same boat trying to paddle our way to better lands.
🧠So by bringing together people who care about healthy digital spaces we in turn creating a healthy digital space. A shared goal incentivizes us to understand one another. That’s meta. Okay, off to watch Being John Malkovich now.
😎Cool happens in Responsible Tech
“Center for Humane Technology Co-Founder Tristan Harris was featured on 60 Minutes to discuss how decades of social media’s extractive business model has encouraged outrage and increased polarization at the expense of our democracy. If you want to take action around tech and democracy, we’ve outlined solutions at the bottom of our democracy page.”-Camille Carlton
How Does the Data Divide Impact Global Policy Challenges? Gillian Diebold (Policy Analyst, Center for Data Innovation) from our Slack community is hosting this important online conversation on December 7.
The LookUp Innovation Challenge is for exceptional youth advocates, storytellers, and innovators (18-25) with bold ideas to address the youth mental health crisis through digital wellbeing and youth led movements and solutions. Awardees receive up to $2500 in funding, mentorship, and the braintrust of a cohort of peers with similar goals. Apply by Nov 28.
🤜We’re a non-profit and a non-prophet. The future is led by the community.
-All Tech Is Human | Write us at Hello / AllTechIsHuman.org
⭐See all of our projects, including our new Office Hours, mentorship program, job board, upcoming gatherings, livestreams, working groups, previous reports, community Slack group, Responsible Tech Guide, our talent matchmaking service, our Responsible Tech Talent Pool, Tech Stewardship Practice Program and more.