RightsCon is the world’s main summit on human rights within the digital age. RightsCon presents a platform for hundreds of contributors world wide to converge, join, and contribute to a shared agenda for the longer term. It permits enterprise leaders, activists, technologists, policymakers, journalists, philanthropists, researchers, and artists from world wide to work together and discover alternatives to advance human rights within the digital age. The eleventh RightsCon Summit in 2022 came about from 6-10 June.
Jeni Tennison attended the summit and has supplied some reflections from the next periods.
a) Decolonizing co-design: International South views
This session seemed on the idea of design considering and co-design; the way it had arisen in Scandinavia, as a mechanism by which staff / workers may turn out to be concerned in design in an industrial setting; and the way it has and is being tailored to be used throughout the social sector, and outdoors the International North.
“I used to be considering it as a result of co-design as a way lives someplace close to the highest of Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation and the IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation. It ought to be a strategy that helps organizations and communities to design knowledge governance processes collectively, for instance. On the identical time, we all know plenty of these most affected by knowledge governance selections are going to be minorized in a technique or one other, so decolonising the method – making it as approachable as attainable by the vary of contributors we need to be included and particularly difficult International North assumptions – goes to be necessary.”
Quite a lot of the dialogue centered across the panellists’ experiences facilitating co-design periods. She mentions some sensible ideas that struck her:
- at all times having two facilitators, a minimum of certainly one of which is from the neighborhood that you simply’re co-designing with.
- utilizing an ice-breaker that includes folks sharing blissful or loving reminiscences about widespread experiences (eg favourite meals) with strangers, to concentrate on constructive emotions of widespread humanity.
- not utilizing the phrase “options” as a result of it carries what could be a crushing expectation of finality, but additionally as a result of co-design ought to be extra targeted on exploring the issue house than discovering options.
- viewing facilitators as servants to the contributors, relatively than as their guides.
The organizers of the panel, Innovation for Change, additionally shared a brand new “Spellbook” for co-design, InnoMojo, which appears to be like helpful for co-design efforts round knowledge governance.
b) The state of non-public knowledge safety in Africa: a comparative method
This was an interactive session targeted on folks in Africa sharing their experiences and views on private knowledge safety legal guidelines throughout the continent. One technique to observe that is to take a look at which nations have ratified the African Union’s Malabo Conference on Cyber Safety and Private Information Safety.
“I went alongside to higher perceive the present state of information safety legislation throughout Africa, and to see whether or not there have been any approaches that integrated the extra collective and participatory approaches to knowledge governance that we’re advocating for.”
A lot of the session targeted on acquainted challenges reminiscent of:
- lack of ratification of the conference (no legislation means no rights)
- if there’s a legislation, lack of citizen consciousness of these digital and knowledge rights
- lack of efficient enforcement, resulting from weak or lacking regulators
One panellist, talking concerning the expertise in Ghana, talked about how knowledge is summary, and the idea of “privateness” is not one thing that is acquainted to their mind-set. One of many contributors described how even the origin and framing of “human rights” is formed by American and European considering on what rights seem like. Sadly, the session ended earlier than this might be explored in additional element.
c) Driving company motion in the 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 enhancing company behaviors in the direction of the Sustainable Growth Objectives, and the Digital Inclusion Benchmark seemed particularly at company dedication and motion round digital inclusion.
“I went to this session to higher perceive the best way to drive company conduct particularly in the direction of collective and participatory knowledge governance, as this is a vital (I feel mandatory) method to producing extra accountable and moral AI.”
The headline figures from that report are that solely 20 of the 150 corporations they checked out had a dedication to moral AI ideas; even those who do decide to these ideas 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 conversations targeted on getting corporations to decide to a set of AI ideas as a primary step in the direction of extra accountability and moral approaches general.
It was significantly attention-grabbing having some buyers 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 growth processes. The report says:
**3.2.3 Partaking with affected and probably affected stakeholders (CSI 6) **
Partaking with affected and probably affected stakeholders is a important a part of an organization’s method to respecting human rights. This indicator appears to be like 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 offers a minimum of two examples of its engagement with stakeholders (or their reliable 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 corporations (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 services in China, India, Eire, UK, US, and Vietnam leading to over 3,000 actions to handle the employees’ issues. Moreover, the corporate is investigating the usage of new digital labor rights instruments that includes knowledge analytics to extend engagement with stakeholders.
When requested about good practices, nevertheless, the panellists talked about having few good examples to level to and an absence of clear good practices. Apparently, there have been 5 corporations throughout the 150 that had an AI oversight board, however these tended to be technocratic workouts constructed round technical experience (in legislation, ethics, and human rights) relatively than being made up of or incorporating lay members from affected communities .
This piece has been reposted from Linked by Information , with permission and thanks.
Dr Jeni Tennison is an skilled in all issues knowledge, from expertise, to governance, technique, and public coverage. She is the founding father of Linked by knowledge, 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 sits on the Boards of Inventive Commons, the International Partnership for Sustainable Growth Information and the Info Legislation and Coverage Centre. She has a PhD in AI and an OBE for providers to expertise and open knowledge.