NEW Tech & Democracy report! Summit livestream on Wednesday and more!

Plus speakers announced for our London summit, new Responsible Tech Mixer announced, and much more.

🥳Today we release our Tech & Democracy report with 41 profile interviews and resources from over 100 organizations!

The future of technology is intertwined with the future of democracy and the human condition, so it behooves us to have a collective movement to align our future with the public interest. In practice, this means we need a diverse range of backgrounds and disciplines to come together to understand values, best practices, and pathways forward.

🎉We are thrilled to release our latest report today, which you can freely download here. It features 41 profile interviews (from 18 countries), a broad overview of major issues at the intersection of tech and democracy, and resources from over 100 organizations. The release of this report also coincides with our Tech & Democracy: A Better Tech Future Summit which is happening this Wednesday in NYC (you can also watch the livestream).

Through our reports and summits, we have now featured nearly 500 individuals across civil society, government, industry, and academia. In addition, we have now curated resources from over 500 organizations in Responsible Tech, which are also featured in our Responsible Tech Guide. Our reports are made with the input from our working groups, our Slack community of nearly 5k members across 61 countries, regular summits & mixers, our mentorship program, Responsible Tech Job Board + Talent Pool, Responsible Tech University Network, and more. You can find all of the links here and read about our mission here.

As you will read in our Tech & Democracy report, there is an immense need to unite a diverse range of stakeholders across disciplines and locations who come together for knowledge-sharing, collaboration, and co-creation. A strong Responsible Tech ecosystem is needed in order to tackle the wicked tech & society issues we face. Do you want to hear more on this topic? David Ryan Polgar, Founder & Director of All Tech Is Human, will be speaking online on Thurs, March 16th from 12-1pm ET as the kick-off speaker for Harvard’s new Responsible Innovation Series run by the Digital, Data, and Design Institute.

👋 Join the livestream this Wednesday for our Tech & Democracy summit!

We are getting ready for our Tech & Democracy summit this Wednesday in NYC, which is bringing together an excellent mix of 120 individuals to tackle thorny issues. You can freely watch the livestream portion of the summit from 1-5pm ET; you can find all of the speakers, panel info, and livestream sign-up here.

This gathering is being hosted at the Consulate General of Canada in New York, our partner for the summit.

🙏Thank you to everyone who attended our recent livestream on Working in Responsible Tech: Careers for Tackling Wicked Tech & Society Issues. If you missed it, you can watch the video above where David Ryan Polgar and Rebekah Tweed from All Tech Is Human were joined by Franchesca Rybar (Business Ops at Exegy), Susannah Shattuck (Head of Product at Credo AI), Em Wilson (Technical Recruiter at CivicActions), and Chanel Cornett (Counsel, Trust & Safety at Zoom) to discuss how people can become involved in roles focused on Responsible AI, Trust & Safety, Public Interest Tech, Tech & Democracy, and Youth/Tech/Wellbeing.

😂And since we get nervous from seeing any opening on our busy schedule, we will be having another livestream for the community….

💡Do you like to share your ideas? And do you like to know what’s new with our org and our upcoming projects? Well, this livestream is for you!

As you can see by the length of this newsletter, we have a lot happening here at All Tech Is Human. And there is even more that we are working on, along with ideas we’d like to share for feedback from the community. Please join us on Thurs, March 9th at 1pm ET as team members from our organization share what they’re working on, along with opportunities to share your ideas and suggestions.

🤩We’re energized to meet many of you in person on March 15th in NYC and have a book launch for Meredith Broussard!

This gathering is shaping up to be a lot of fun, as we will have 200 people in a room who all care about building a better tech future. Our mixers are popular because people leave with a sense of optimism; sure, the problems we face are overwhelmingly complex. But seeing such a broad group of people come together wanting to tackle these wicked issues is quite inspiring.

Due to the demand, this gathering reached capacity within 10 days of the first announcement, but you can sign up for the waitlist if room becomes available. This is also why we are launching MORE gatherings as you’ll see in the rest of the newsletter. A big thank you to Project Liberty, our partner for this event!

🏃‍♀️Thank you to everyone who joined our first Digital Playground livestream with New_ Public last week; next one is on March 30th!

REGISTER NOW to join us for our March Digital Playground on March 30th at 3pm ET with Block Party’s Head of Marketing and Growth, Zoelle Egner, hosted by All Tech Is Human's Rebekah Tweed and New_ Public's Ravon Ruffin, where you can sneak a peek at Privacy Party, Block Party’s forthcoming tool for creating safer digital spaces within popular social platforms!

👉Our Digital Playground Series is a monthly virtual program series hosted by New_ Public and All Tech Is Human, in the spirit of discovery, experimentation, and creation of healthier digital public spaces. The Digital Playground Series is part of New_ Public and All Tech Is Human’s year-long partnership as part of Community by Design, with the support of the Unfinished Network, to identify, define and map thriving healthy digital public spaces focused on building pluralistic, inclusive, open online spaces, and prioritizing the needs of their communities.

In Digital Playground #2, Egner will guide us through opportunities for online safety & anti-harassment with a 30-minute look at consumer tools for creating healthier digital environments inside potentially harmful existing social platforms, especially for those who are required to be “extremely online” – whether as journalists, advocates, politicians, or other public figures.

🕵️You'll get a sneak peek at the company’s forthcoming product, Privacy Party, and have an opportunity to give feedback and discuss the product as well as to get on the waitlist. You will also have a chance to hear about how the company is adapting to a changing environment after the change in ownership at Twitter.

The session will close with a 30 minute deep-dive for participants to explore healthy digital public spaces through the lens of tools that address online harassment and privacy concerns. You’ll also hear from All Tech Is Human about learnings from our new Tech & Democracy report, and the role of social platforms and how they affect thriving multi-racial democracies.

🎊Announcing the Content Moderation panel happening at our very first summit in London!

There has been an outpouring of interest for our first summit in London happening on April 18th at The Shard for 250 people, so we are already busy mapping out plans for continued ways to build on the enthusiasm. All Tech Is Human is excited to announce the panelist for our Content Moderation discussion (will also be filmed); we will be welcoming Dr. Murtaza Shaikh (Principal – Illegal Harms, Hate & Terrorism on the Online Safety Policy Team at Ofcom), Abigail Bridgman (Deputy VP of Policy and Content at the Oversight Board), and David Hunter (VP of Product for Crisp’s Platform Trust & Safety).

Some of the orgs and companies that will have individuals in attendance include Ada Lovelace Institute, Alan Turing Institute, Atlantic Council, Center for AI and Digital Policy, DCMS, Deloitte, Demos, EY, LEGO, Meta, Milltown Partners, Ofcom, Oversight Board, Oxford Internet Institute, Royal Society, Salesforce, Social Finance, Tech Against Terrorism, Tony Blair Institute, Twitch, UK Safer Internet Centre, Yoti, and many more. 

This gathering is being done with the support and partnership of Crisp, a Kroll business. Demand for this summit is far greater than our capacity to accommodate; if you would like to be considered for in-person attendance (it’s free), please fill out our interest form.

🚀Given how quickly our Responsible Tech Mixers fill up, we are going to do more of them! Join us in NYC on April 26th.

For those of you who missed signing up for our March 15th Responsible Tech Mixer, we have added another on the calendar. We also received some really helpful feedback from the community after our last newsletter, so we are going to incorporate info and connections around careers in a more casual manner + smaller type gatherings.

And follow along with future newsletters, as this in-person mixer will surely add a few surprises…

😎Cool happenings in Responsible Tech

Last Thursday, Selene Hernandez and Sandra Khalil hosted our first Intergenerational Youth Roundtable with our collaborator, Thanasi Dilos from Civics Unplugged! We are really excited about the conversations and efforts that are going to erupt from the collective of folks who are interested in tackling issues that lie at the intersection of Youth, Tech, and Wellbeing. The room was filled with folks from different countries, varying ages, and racial, gender, and educational backgrounds. We are looking forward to co-creating position papers and an event that highlights the power of experiential, educational, and professional knowledge in establishing a holistic approach to issues that affect youth and our well-being. More to come…

☟Read below about some of the ways you can get involved in the Responsible Tech ecosystem, through submissions from the community.

“We are honored to invite the All Tech Is Human community to join us for the 5th Anniversary Celebration virtual event of the groundbreaking paper, Gender Shades, this THURSDAY, MARCH 2ND from 12:30PM ET/9:30AM PT to 2PM ET/11AM PT.

‘In February 2018, Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru published a paper that would reverberate through academia and the media, growing louder and more prescient until this Wednesday, when Amazon decided to put a one-year moratorium on police use of its facial recognition technology. The paper was called “Gender Shades,” and it showed strong statistical evidence that facial recognition from companies investing billions in A.I. research and development, namely Microsoft, IBM, and Face++, performed worse when analyzing women and people with darker skin,’ wrote Dave Gershgorn for OneZero in 2020.

Dr. Joy Buolamwini will be joined by Dr. Timnit Gebru to discuss the history and impact of the paper while honoring Robert Williams with the first Gender Shades Justice Award of $5000. Please RSVP at Bit.ly/GenderShadesRSVP. And please share the news by downloading our social presskit, and tagging @AJLUnited in all posts. bit.ly/GenderShadesSPK Looking forward to seeing you there!” -Dr. Joy Buolamwini

“Hello responsible tech-ers! My name is Sam Brown and in addition to being a responsible tech practitioner, I’m the trustee of a community library hub which borders five boroughs in South London, UK. We’ve partnered with the Responsible Technology Institute at Oxford University in order to establish a community lab in the library which will explore how community members can challenge the regulation and development of AI. The lab is an experiment in community decision-making, held in one of the most trusted public spaces where people of all ages and circumstances gather.

The first session of the lab will be held on Saturday, March 4th, both in-person and online, and focused on children and AI. If you’re around, we would absolutely love for you to come and help us explore this topic! Sign up here. If you’re unable to make this session, there will be others throughout the year, and a final report and video released at the end of the project to share our learning. You can register your interest for future UNLH Community Lab updates here.”-Sam Brown

“The Call for Proposals for TrustCon 2023 is live! TrustCon is a global conference dedicated to the work of trust and safety professionals, convening trust and safety experts from tech, civil society, academia, and government with the goal of knowledge building and networking. We invite you to submit a lightning talk, presentation, panel, and/or workshop for consideration. The conference will be three days this year, and we want to make room for additional tracks and explore the depth and breadth of trust and safety. So, this year, in addition to accepting general proposals, we’re also accepting submissions for the following tracks: Engineering, Operations, Partnerships, Policy, Product, and Research. Submissions are due on Friday, March 17, 2023. Learn more here.”-Kaofeng Lee

“Many in the responsible tech community who communicate about AI and use visual images might have noticed that the stock images available are rather blue and influenced by science fiction. So to help avoid the misinformation and harmful narratives represented within most stock AI imagery, the Better Images of AI project (of which All Tech Is Human is a Founding Supporter) has produced a Guide for users and creators of images of AI. 

In the Giode, Dr Kanta Dihal laid out some of her key findings from a year-long research project in a format which makes it easy for users, creators and funders of images relating to AI to refer to. The research included roundtable and workshop conversations with over 100 experts from a range of different fields. Participants from media and communications, the tech sector, policy, research, education and the arts dug down into the issues surrounding how we communicate visually and appraised the utility and impact of the images already published in the Better Images of AI library.

Please pass it on to anyone you think needs it, so we can move towards more inclusive and transparent representations of AI. Better Images of AI: A Guide for Users and Creators is now available to download as a pdf here.” -Tania Duarte

“Headstream and SecondMuse are delighted to introduce the Headstream Learning Lab, our community-building and social-learning platform with open and unlimited access to practices, tools, and resources supporting innovators in the youth digital health, ed-tech, and social tech sectors. The Lab is particularly relevant for entities building solutions to support the wellbeing of young people.

With the launch of the Headstream Learning Lab, we are introducing a robust self-guided course on how to measure the impact of your solution, and how to collaborate with young people during your design process. Join us on our mission to build a better digital world for young people. Sign up for the Headstream Learning Lab today and help us spread the word with your communities.

The toolkit attached includes templates for emails, social media posts, and content. To ensure that the toolkit is tailored to your specific needs, we have segmented the resources based on your target audience. Thank you so much for helping us spread the word, and welcome to the Headstream Learning Lab community!” -David Ball

🤔ChatGPT won’t have an answer to co-creating a better tech future. It’s going to take collective action and understanding. Are you in?

-All Tech Is Human | Write us at Hello / AllTechIsHuman.org

⭐See all of our projects, including our new Responsible Tech University Program, 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, 500+ Responsible Tech Org List, and more.