Our first speaker is joanne mcneil, author of lurking, the inaugural winner of the art foundations art writing award for an emerging writer, resident at ivy, Logan Nonfiction Program fellow and instructor. Our next speaker will be sorry. Hang on. Sorry. I had the video open on my computer and sending my own words back to me. It was very confusing. Our second speaker will be Charlton Mcilwain, author of black software, the internet and Racial Justice. The vice provost of faculty engagement at New York University and professor of Media Communication at nyu steinberg school, our final speaker is author of the new laws of robotics, Robert Citino from the Yale Information Society project. So take it away, joann. Im happy to be on this panel with two others i really appreciate and a topic im sure we have so much to say about. There is something of a history. There are many things to look at and representative of missed opportunities. I wanted to focus on ten or 12 years ago, the time of the great recession, major financial crisis and how it was a unique opportunity for Tech Companies to thrive. A number of elements would be familiar, at the time the smart phone took off, the time that because there was a financial crisis that had implications not just wall street but real estate there was a drive to invest elsewhere and there was a new industry popping up at a location not in new york so with all of these elements coming together another element was lack of scrutiny about these companies that was not on the level of the user, it has plenty of users of these technologies that had issues with google or facebook but the opportunity to find a platform for it, to discuss it, discuss the consequences they were feeling, there wasnt much press about, there wasnt a lot of critical tests. It was very difficult to place critical stories about technology in newspapers and magazines and there was these think tanks and Academic Research centers and wonderful they are all taking off in the past ten years, this is relatively new. I want people to take a look back at the founding of these companies to see what problems were there from the beginning. There forms are not just cosmetic but paring back considerably. Those are ideas i want to throw out. Great. Charlton mcilwain. That is a great segue to my remarks and maybe take a little bit more time if the audience i was thinking last night what i wanted to say to bring forward in this discussion to lead with and i had that moment i had the feeling i had written these things before as i was collecting my fox and looked back into the book and my introduction, i think i said it here and said it better so i wanted to read a short part of the introduction to black software in context and end with two or three provocations that lead us back to joanns comment, what do we do and how do we proceed, the book of course is black software was conjures myriad ways, refers to the program we desire and Design Computers to run, who designs the program for what purposes and what or whom becomes an object for data. It refers to how and how well the computer reforms the task for the program so in this book i tell two black Software Stories organized into book 1 and book 2 and the first unfold throughout book 1 and this is where group call the vanguard that i write about begins to emerge. These are black hobbyists and entrepreneurs, organizers, activists, knowledge brokers and they position black folks, black culture to occupy the leading edge of the popular social development so their collective stories begin in the mid 70s, continue into the 80s and 90s in the advent of personal computing and early days of computer networking and their story extends to the World Wide Web first and the dot. Com booms first bust and demonstrates how black people have taken technology not originally designed with our concerns in mind but using that technology to further our own purposes and political interests but black software is a story how Computing Technology was built and developed to keep black america docile and in its place, disproportionately disadvantaged, locked up and marked for death. This is a story i unravel in book 2 and it speaks to know if areas ways of using technology to destroy and nullify black agency and black peoples hopes and dreams, aspirations and Human Potential and political interest limiting the heights we were meant to achieve. So book 2 begins in 1960 and it has to do with a group of people i represent as the committee men, the Crime Commission in 1965, who built new computing systems directed at what was then seen as americas preeminent problem, the problem of blackness. In between the two versions of black software impacting black peoples lives and those that destroy them, lives of significant question, not about recently popularized concepts like computer bias or fair algorithms or digital ethics. The question goes to the heart of the matter that these concepts skirt around. And not just founding principle, and proceeded and animated the Earth Development uses of computational systems. Can we use technology to significantly advance the cause of Racial Justice and my answer is only if we come to grips, was designed to thwart these efforts of Racial Justice and civil rights, it is incumbent upon us to think about what it means, what it would mean to dismantle our technological environment and infrastructure from the ground up, bent towards the cause of Racial Justice. What does that mean, what does that look like, that is part of the future. Thanks to joanne mcneil. I will make some connections to my project, at the center of this technology for social justice and to introduce my book new laws of robotics, some new laws, really concrete example of how they affect our every day lives and an interview with someone, either higher or not. There are now firms developing facial analysis and facial recognition, microsecond by microsecond. Every emotion you show, how fast you blink and if you smile or not. What is troubling about it, these firms are saying we could look at your existing employees, top performers or who matches the way they speak. A couple responses to that, part of my book articulates how to translate those worries. The first wave of worry is along the lines of charless points about these systems, we have to watch carefully, if we allow this to replicate themselves on certain lines, this is about High Performance or replicating the current one. There are ideas of users that are configured to say we might reconfigure the use of the technology altogether because we might humanize it. On the basis of personal reactions, 10,000 applications, how are we supposed to screens them. It is less troubling, analyzing peoples faces, people had no control with, in that position. It is an ai application, i tried to develop the hopeful vision with robotics and compliments rather than substitutes, lots of places where robotics can substitute human labor eventually, in many professions you have that. How ai robotics complement professionals, the second is to avoid having systems do that. This raised civil rights, rightleaning groups, mine already accounts online, it is a deeply troubling thing, impersonating people. And to stop arms races. To require attribution, in the fields of law medicine, to develop those and say what do the policies look like. Thank you. If anyone is watching this contemporaneously, aimed at the books of Charlton Mcilwain you see bias in technology because there is bias. With that that raises the question, does it help to focus not so much on technology but on the people pushing the decisionmaking power because they are often the same cause on the technology side. The systems work differently, how you envision writing the ship, when various technology, the attitudes of people that create both. That is a great question, one that i think about often. I sort of agree when we think of where and when the fix is with human beings more than the technology, one of the things we started to get into was thinking naively that if we can sixth attack or the algorithm or police the inferences that are being made by data that is being conjoined, we can spend our way out of it but we make a mistake thinking of things that way and one of the fundamental problems is people who are designing these kinds of systems, thinking about franks examples of facial recognition in an interview and employment context, how many of those folks are very wellversed in the history and context of the face and what that means psychologically and what those connections between facial attributes and racial biases and stereotypes etc. The technology that uses that, talking about qualifications and that is where the disconnect is in dealing with individual attitudes and Historical Context in racism and all these things that people have no idea about. All you are thinking about is a more efficient system to get through these resumes. I like the point about the history, ideally part of Computer Science education, much larger role understanding the history of social context, the psychology of things like facial analysis programs, a behavioristic model of humans as opposed to things that might be more phenomenological, and writing on this topic, and humans doing it. And the process of what he was doing statistically, things like bias. Damaging certain numbers with impunity and react and serve but the center of the process, given records of big Tech Companies. In your comments, if you go back a little bit in time, emerging technology, big Tech Companies. You would think the biggest balance in our society, in large companies. And learn something from it. The tenth anniversary of the release of this social Network Everyone has heard of. There is a hollywood film about the founding of facebook. Not necessarily the best criticism of facebook a hollywood film depiction that was up for an academy award. Pretty commonly, news articles or opinion pieces, a common beginning ten years ago, everyone used to love facebook and now they are afraid of it. It is a common structure. I understand it as a writer. It is a rhetorical technique to give your opponent credit before you go into the criticism. People watching that, people who speak on these issues, keep in consideration that is the narrative zuckerberg has about facebook. He himself when he gets interviewed, all of this is very new. They are documenting this, the number of users facebook hand, i dont have a number off the top of my head the ten years ago, certainly would have counted so that is something i want people to be aware of. If we believe in this idea of a beautiful past it is easy to get back to, we can get back to where the Tech Companies were, why do we have a company like facebook . It is a little tricky. Google search is very useful but what facebook offered, we let you connect with people. That is something the internet would let you do, decentralized technology that dont have commercialized functions placed in the middle. Also everything it offers is a useful function, say you need a facebook account to get updates on the School Committee meeting or things related to your church. Wouldnt at all be better than a decentralized space, and all of the Community Newspapers. The Community Newspaper might have had a lot about your representative, now that facebook has taken over, looking more global and embroiled in things like scandals and conspiracies. I dont think you have . Anonin a Community Newspaper 10 years ago. It could have happened. People think about what you actually get as you need it. A rhetorical question in your comments isnt it better on the community organization, the degree of free will, a lot of organizations chose not to represent themselves on facebook with decentralized means, ultimately those were the wrong choices. That would have been at the time when facebook was working hard to on board facebook basics where a lot of people have conflated facebook and the internet because it offered a free service and in these countries they cant keep in touch with their family. It has gotten so enshrined with communication in general and the problems and there are many, another reason is we needed that scrutiny a while back and we need to go back to see the not so clearly stated benefits, communicate at the time. There is a great connection, and in the software, the moment is very brief in the mid90s, social media like facebook and so forth, and characteristically different than the facebooks meaning, was a site that was heavily attracted to africanamericans, games the following and commercial appeal, they were going to get what they wanted to a filter, had a thriving immunity but like a Community Newspaper, here is where i can connect. Get the news that i want, the ecosystems that would help you, a hyperlink basically help you travel, if you want this, that and the other, all things that are of interest, overwhelmingly shows to you what it thinks you should be thinking about at the moment. A prior moment to look to as an alternative, the platforms you are mentioning. Alternatives, a discussion of black voices, aol and thinking about the past that we didnt take. The automation of media. And ultimately, if there was some way to account that, to not have that, the extent we saw the giant players, the smaller players were able to get to pushed out, i dont know. From a legal perspective, to push in that direction. I felt the same way about the trans group that was transitioning on youtube, and better data regime would stop Something Like that, the misdirection. The answer or a major component of the answer to these problems for lack of a better term, education, people who engage in automation to learn more about psychology, history, injustice, less empathized in computer education and is there not going to be enough, what the law allows and what is possible pushing people into less automated direction. A couple thoughts. Education is a key component, i dont know that it holds the compulsion to do things that must be done. In the context of the current conversation i think back to that transitional moment from the mid to late 1990s and what happened later and the proliferation, and without black people in the ability of black people to process from that, the platforms gobbling up or disbanding the prior assets but we see them over and over whether they pop up on twitter or ticktock, the same black cultural element but no attribution of where the property comes from, no ability for folks to profit but there does need to be some legal driver, policy driver that helped to moderate. If i could follow up on that point in terms of that, the issue is ownership, it is not going to counteract problems we are facing at the moment, to circle back to ideas, with aols involvement, fascinating to think in the 90s, in magazines, aol has the idea, stations like bet, they could capture, and out of that place, people in the room, facebook had harvard dropouts and the community, did not have representatives of various communities, decisions that were very harmful, with ownership ideally in my mind, decentralized, if you have a church group or school or something you know better than anyone else how to moderate and implement that. Around state ethics, that conversation takes the place of more structural change. Between the ai ethics conversation in the regulatory conversation, when things are framed as lets have a long discussion, the ownership, a look at what the australian competition doing now, not as targeted, lets think about the ultimate creator monetizing. A lot of aspects, on line, no way for the ultimate creator it is so little. That is the aspect of the future, how can we serve just that, the licensee entity, other forms of licenses in the competition, that had its own as well in terms of the it schemes but input through the conversation. This brings up to me a lot of your suggestions come with compelling stories how ai with the designs. When people hear them he is moving and i see how humans make different kinds of mistakes, we need to build these safeguards for Technology Working to gather, and when the story is so compelling, that everyone did not enthusiastically award it, many times, what we might have hoped, and wants to believe it will be great but the computer will fix it and more immune to these stories. I remember presenting my first papal on google, one capacity i was presenting it says dont mess with my google. It works for me, not a lot of sympathy for people it wasnt working for. Im amazed by two things is the antitrust hearings, on the judiciary committee, for the attorney general. We need to make this a this several story, and how people have been hurt and a year or so, oppression came up and it was one of the best examples of telling stories about googles discriminatory search results to how yelp helped accelerate the decline of hair salons. That idea is going to be the key, it is great. One thing counter ring, the reasons decentralization is helpful. Large groups of people, tech savvy innocent interest, people want things to be easy and to work, Artificial Intelligence in the media and search results, hard to curate information when you do the work yourself, given harm that comes from that, it is harder when you are not relying on another major into t whether it is a Large Corporation or ai a really great question. I can direct the viewers to great resource called run your social set up by derek and talks about his experiences in decentralized platform. It requires skills and all these things, not as easy as opening up a lock top. We have a range of opportunity, if you have Something Like that and have 50 people, thinking what i