Centre for Internet and Society

What is the problem with ‘Ethical AI’? An Indian Perspective

Arindrajit Basu and Pranav M.B. — 2019-07-21T14:57:08Z

On 22 May 2019, the OECD member countries adopted the OECD Council Recommendation on Artificial Intelligence. The Principles, meant to provide an “ethical framework” for governing Artificial Intelligence (AI), were the first set of guidelines signed by multiple governments, including non-OECD members: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, and Romania.

The article by Arindrajit Basu and Pranav M.B. was published by cyberBRICS on July 17, 2019.

This was followed by the G20 adopted human-centred AI Principles on June 9th. These are the latest in a slew of (at least 32!) public, and private ‘Ethical AI’ initiatives that seek to use ethics to guide the development, deployment and use of AI in a variety of use cases. They were conceived as a response to a range of concerns around algorithmic decision-making, including discrimination, privacy, and transparency in the decision-making process.

In India, a noteworthy recent document that attempts to address these concerns is the National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence published by the National Institution for Transforming India, also called NITI Aayog, in June 2018. As the NITI Aayog Discussion paper acknowledges, India is the fastest growing economy with the second largest population in the world and has a significant stake in understanding and taking advantage of the AI revolution. For these reasons the goal pursued by the strategy is to establish the National Program on AI, with a view to guiding the research and development in new and emerging technologies, while addressing questions on ethics, privacy and security.

While such initiatives and policy measures are critical to promulgating discourse and focussing awareness on the broad socio-economic impacts of AI, we fear that they are dangerously conflating tenets of existing legal principles and frameworks, such as human rights and constitutional law, with ethical principles – thereby diluting the scope of the former. While we agree that ethics and law can co-exist, ‘Ethical AI’ principles are often drafted in a manner that posits as voluntary positive obligations various actors have taken upon themselves as opposed to legal codes they necessarily have to comply with.

To have optimal impact, ‘Ethical AI’ should serve as a decision-making framework only in specific instances when human rights and constitutional law do not provide a ready and available answer.

Vague and unactionable

Conceptually, ‘Ethical AI’ is a vague set of principles that are often difficult to define objectively. In this perspective, academics like Brett Mittelstadt of the Oxford Internet Institute argues that unlike in the field of medicine – where ethics has been used to design a professional code, ethics in AI suffers from four core flaws. First, developers lack a common aim or fiduciary duty to a consumer, which in the case of medicine is the health and well-being of the patient. Their primary duty lies to the company or institution that pays their bills, which often prevents them from realizing the extent of the moral obligation they owe to the consumer.

The second is a lack of professional history which can help clarify the contours of well-defined norms of ‘good behaviour.’ In medicine, ethical principles can be applied to specific contexts by considering what similarly placed medical practitioners did in analogous past scenarios. Given the relative nascent emergence of AI solutions, similar professional codes are yet to develop.

Third is the absence of workable methods or sustained discourse on how these principles may be translated into practice. Fourth, and we believe most importantly, in addition to ethical codes, medicine is governed by a robust and stringent legal framework and strict legal and accountability mechanisms, which are absent in the case of ‘Ethical AI’. This absence gives both developers and policy-makers large room for manoeuvre.

However, such focus on ethics may be a means of avoiding government regulation and the arm of the law. Indeed, due to its inherent flexibility and non-binding nature, ethics can be exploited as a piecemeal red herring solution to the problems posed by AI. Controllers of AI development are often profit-driven private entities, that gain reputational mileage by using the opportunity to extensively deliberate on broad ethical notions.

Under the guise of meaningful ‘self-regulation’, several organisations publish internal ‘Ethical AI’ guidelines and principles, and fund ethics research across the globe. In doing so, they occlude the shackles of binding obligation and deflect from attempts at tangible regulation.

Comparing Law to Ethics

This is in contrast to the well-defined jurisprudence that human rights and constitutional law offer, which should serve as the edifice of data-driven decision making in any context.

In the table below, we try to explain this point by looking at how three core fundamental rights enshrined both in our constitution and human rights instruments across the globe-right to privacy, right to equality/right against discrimination and due process-find themselves captured in three different sets of ‘Ethical AI frameworks.’ One of these inter-governmental (OECD), one devised by a private sector actor (‘Google AI’) and one by our very own, NITI AAYOG.

With the exception of certain principles,most ‘Ethical AI’ principles are loosely worded as ‘‘seek to avoid’, ‘give opportunity for’, or ‘encourage’. A notable exception is the NITI AAYOG’s approach to protecting privacy in the context of AI. The document explicitly recommends the establishment of a national data protection framework for data protection, sectoral regulations that apply to specific contexts with the consideration of international standards such as GDPR as benchmarks. However, it fails to reference available constitutional standards when it discusses bias or explainability.

Several similar legal rules that have been enshrined in legal provisions -outlined and elucidated through years of case law and academic discourse – can be utilised to underscore and guide AI principles. However, existing AI principles do not adequately articulate how the legal rule can actually be applied to various scenarios by multiple organisations.

We do not need a new “Law of Artificial Intelligence” to regulate this space. Judge Frank Easterbrook’s famous 1996 proclamation on the ‘Law of the Horse’ through which he opposed the creation of a niche field of ‘cyberspace law’ comes to mind. He argued that a multitude of legal rules deal with ‘horses’, including the sale of horses, individuals kicked by horses, and with the licensing and racing of horses. Like with cyberspace, any attempt to arrive at a corpus of specialised ‘law of the horse’ would be shallow and ineffective.

Instead of fidgeting around for the next shiny regulatory tool, industry, practitioners, civil society and policy makers need to get back to the drawing board and think about applying the rich corpus of existing jurisprudence to AI governance.

What is the role for ‘Ethical AI?’

What role can ‘ethical AI’ then play in forging robust and equitable governance of Artificial Intelligence? As it does in all other societal avenues, ‘ethical AI’ should serve as a framework for making legitimate algorithmic decisions in instances where law might not have an answer. An example of such a scenario is the Project Maven saga – where 3,000 Google employees signed a petition opposing Google’s involvement with a US Department of Defense project by claiming that Google should not be involved in “the business of war.” There is no law-international or domestic that suggests that Project Maven-which was designed to study battlefield imagery using AI, was illegal. However, the debate at Google proceeded on ethical grounds and on the application of the ‘Ethical AI’ principles to this present context.

We realise the importance of social norms and mores in carving out any regulatory space. We also appreciate the role of ethics in framing these norms for responsible behaviour. However, discourse across civil society, academic, industry and government circles all across the globe needs to bring law back into the discussion as a framing device. Not doing so risks diluting the debate and potential progress to a set of broad, unactionable principles that can easily be manipulated for private gain at the cost of public welfare.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/what-is-the-problem-with-2018ethical-ai2019-an-indian-perspective

Roundtable Discussion on “The Future of AI Policy in India” @ ICRIER

Admin — 2019-07-10T01:46:36Z

Radhika Radhakrishnan, attended a Roundtable Discussion on “The Future of AI Policy in India” organized by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) in New Delhi on July 1, 2019, to arrive at actionable recommendations for promotion of AI in India.

Radhika's inputs primarily focused on - capacity and skilling for AI adoption in India, sectoral opportunities for the adoption of AI, regulation of explanations for AI, fairness and bias in AI models, and actionable recommendations for government priorites for AI policies in India.

Concept Note

India’s Artificial Intelligence moment is truly here and now. At a time when a diverse range of applications based on AI are being developed, pushing its frontier further into uncharted realms of business and society, Indian policy makers are contemplating not just AI’s potential for growth and social transformation, but also its proclivity to create divides and inequality. Our study attempts to understand the impacts of AI and trace the pathways to realizing it.

AI’s transformational potential stems from its ability to lend itself to a diverse range of applications across a range of sectors. One can witness AI based applications in traditional spheres of manufacturing, which are transforming quality control, production lines, and supply chain management, and in services, which are creating personalized product offerings and high-quality customer engagement. AI applications are also common in sectors such as agriculture that have taken a back seat in technological innovations in the post-industrial world. AI also demonstrates potential for impacting developmental challenges by responding to societies’ immediate demand for healthcare, education and expanding access to finance and banking.

The consequences of AI diffusion stem from AI’s pervasiveness across society, its ability to trigger innovation, and its tendencies to undergo transformation and evolution. These are typical characteristics of a class of technologies that can be found across history, the emergence and diffusion of which have enabled the wealth of nations. These are called General Purpose Technologies (GPT). Technologies such as steam engine, electricity, computers, semi-conductors, and more recently the Internet, can all be conceived as belonging to the GPT class of technologies. Our study is based on the understanding that the implications of AI can be best understood by viewing AI as a GPT.

Historically, the economic impacts of GPTs have not been immediate but follow after its diffusion across the economy, i.e. over a period of time. There are two reasons that explain this phenomenon: firstly, in early phases of technology diffusion, an economy diverts part of its resources from productive activities to costly activities aimed at enabling the GPT. For instance, organizations adopting computers must also invest in training employees or hire computer scientists, re-arrange production activities or organizational structures to accommodate computer driven work-flows, all of which are costly economic activities. Secondly, it is only after the GPT is diffused and widely used in the economy that the statistics measuring GDP start counting and fully measuring the GPT.

Empirical research on GPTs such as AI, including ours, means confronting the challenge of measurement. Estimates on the economic impact of AI are bound to be imprecise because data on AI’s adoption is not available or adequately reflected in the data used to compute economic growth, at least not yet. Measuring the economic impact of AI is also difficult because of the magnitude of indirect effects on productivity that GPTs trigger. It is not therefore uncommon that studies on GPTs, while attempting to estimate their economic impacts, also engage in in-depth case studies and historical analysis of its impacts.

Our findings show unambiguous and positive impacts of AI on firm level productivity across sectors, although there is variation in the magnitude of positive impacts across sectors. We complement our findings with case studies that cover different firms that are developing AI based applications across a range of sectors to understand the underlying firm-level capabilities that drive innovations in AI based applications. Our study leads us towards high-level policy challenges facing organizations, civil society and government, and which when addressed enable the full realization of economic growth triggered by AI.

However, our conclusions are a step-away from actionable policy recommendations. Given your experience with and within India’s AI based ecosystem, we invite you to deliberate and recommend insights and strategies that can help us arrive at concrete and practicable policy recommendations towards achieving a growth and welfare enhancing AI-based ecosystem in India.

Proposed Questions for Deliberation

In which sectors do we observe an immediate opportunity for the adoption of AI? What could be the nature of these applications?
In which areas of AI development and application is there an immediate opportunity for governments, industry and academia to collaborate?
What should be the Government’s top five priorities in the next one year to catalyse the growth of AI in India?
How and what agencies of the Government should be involved in implementation of India’s National AI mission?
What aspects of the Government’s capacity requires enhancement to adapt to challenges of a growing Indian AI based ecosystem?
What measures can the Government take to regulate for AI safety and ethical use of AI?
What are the policy measures that the Government can undertake to safeguard against the consequences of AI based inequality?

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/roundtable-discussion-on-201cthe-future-of-ai-policy-in-india201d-icrier

Fostering Strategic Convergence in US-India Tech Relations: 5G and Beyond

Justin Sherman and Arindrajit Basu — 2019-07-05T02:19:09Z

The 2019 G-20 summit underscores the importance of fostering strategic convergence in U.S.-India tech relations.

The article by Justin Sherman and Arindrajit Basu was published in the Diplomat on July 3, 2019.

As world leaders gathered for the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan this past weekend, a multitude of issues from climate to trade to technology came to the fore. Much of the focus was on U.S.-China interactions at the summit, as the two nations are locked in both a trade war and broader technological and geopolitical competition. Despite the present focus on the U.S. and China, however, it is crucial to not overlook another bilateral relationship of ever-growing importance in the process: The tech relationship between the United States and India.

Certainly, the two countries have many disagreements on some technology issues. But this is a geopolitical relationship that is both strategically important for each country, and a vital opportunity for the two largest democracies in the world to collectively combat Chinese-style digital authoritarianism.

Huawei and 5G

First, with respect to national security and 5G roll-outs, the U.S and India are not on the same page. The United States, for several months now, has been on a diplomatic messaging tour of the world to try to convince — with great resistance (some would argue failure) — allies, partners, and potential partners alike to ban Chinese firm Huawei from supplying components of 5G networks. Many officials across Europe, the Middle East, South America, and elsewhere have been reluctant to ban Huawei per the U.S. recommendation, and India is no exception. Indeed, National Security Advisory Board Chairman P.S. Raghavan told The Hindu that “5G is becoming a fault line in the technology cold war between world powers” and that India must avoid getting caught in these fault lines.

In large part, U.S. diplomatic messaging here has fallen short due to heavy conflations of national security- and trade-related risks; and Trump only contributed further to this fact with his latest reference to Huawei, during the G-20, as a potential trade war bargaining chip. The sheer population of India, however, combined with its fast growing technology sectors and desire to digitize, makes the country an important market player when it comes to the 5G revolution. U.S.-India engagement on 5G issues must be managed effectively through robust articulation of each country’s national interests underscored by a clean segregation of trade and security questions in the discussion. This partnership has the potential to wield great influence in the global market, including in ways that could prioritize or deprioritize certain 5G equipment suppliers (like Huawei).

Data Sovereignty and Data Privacy

Data sovereignty is another hot area in which the U.S.-India tech relationship demands careful negotiation. Over the past year, the Indian government has introduced a range of policy instruments which dictate that certain kinds of data must be stored in servers located physically within India — termed “data localization.” While there are a number of policy objectives this gambit ostensibly seeks to serve, the two which stand out are (1) the presently cumbersome process for Indian law enforcement agencies to access data stored in the U.S. during criminal investigations, and (2) extractive economic models used by U.S. companies operating in India.

A range of conflicting developments emerging from the G-20 summit underscore this fact. India, along with the BRICS grouping, focused on the development dimensions of data governance and re-emphasized the need for data sovereignty — broadly understood as the sovereign right of nations to govern data in their national interest for the welfare of their citizens. President Trump reigned in his focus on the need for cross-border data flows and, in direct opposition to some proposals that have emerged from India, explicitly opposed data localization. While India did not sign the Osaka Declaration on the Digital Economy that promoted cross-border data flows, the importance of cross-border data flows in spurring the global economy did find its way into the Final G-20 Leaders Declaration — which, of course, both countries signed.

Geopolitically, the importance of India’s data governance stance cannot be overstated as it could pave the way for the approach adopted by other emerging economies — most notably the BRICS countries. Likewise, the U.S. has important thinking to do around such questions as what shape a national data privacy law could take. Even though the two countries’ views on data may be quite different from one another, the seats that India and the U.S. have at the table for global data governance discussions — alongside others like Japan, China, and the European Union — underscore the value of meaningful interactions and mutual trust and respect on this issue.

Norms for a Democratic Digital Future

Finally, as the United Nations Group of Governmental Experts and the Open-Ended Working Group meet to resurrect the norm-formulation process for fostering responsible state behavior in cyberspace, India has some homework to do. Even though it has been a member of five out of the six Group of Governmental Experts set up thus far, India is yet to come out with a public statement delineating its views on the applicability of International Law applies in cyberspace. Further, India has also failed to articulate a cohesive digital strategy — instead relying on a patchwork of hastily rolled out and often ill-conceived regulatory policies, some of which commentators in the West have hastily labeled as digital authoritarianism. The U.S., for its part, amidst a cutback to diplomatic cyber engagement (as part of cutbacks to diplomacy writ large), could also up its support of international engagement on these issues. Its recent repeal of net neutrality protections could also be argued as a step back from long-time international norm promotion around internet openness.

Through a combination of domestic policy gambits and foreign policy maneuvers, both states need to draw lines in the sand that safeguard human rights, international law, and democracy online, while arriving at some balance with each other’s national interests.

A primary example lies with artificial intelligence (AI). AI has found increasing use in digital authoritarianism, as dictators use automated, intelligent systems to boost their surveillance capabilities. The Chinese government has arguably been at the forefront of this enhanced level of authoritarian rule for the digital age.

In addition to focusing on AI applications for everything from natural language processing to self-driving cars — through investments, strategies, policy documents, and so on — Beijing has also been deploying AI in the service of large-scale human-rights abuses. Chinese strategy papers on AI, while similarly emphasizing many commercial or benign applications and raising attention to such issues as algorithmic fairness, concurrently have discussed using AI for “social governance,” censorship, and surveillance. To combat the rising intersection of AI and digital authoritarianism, the U.S. and India could wield enormous leverage — as the two largest democracies in the world — in governing these technologies in a democratic fashion that counters dangerous arms-race narratives and uses of AI for surveillance and repression.

The same goes for paying attention to technology exports and diffusion to human-rights abusers. For instance, companies incorporated in China, among those incorporated elsewhere, have been heavily involved in exports of dual-use surveillance technologies to other countries, including those with questionable or outright poor human-rights records. Although companies incorporated in democracies may engage in such practices as well, most democracies take steps to curtail these practices as much as possible, such as through the multilateral Wassenaar Arrangement — which lays out export controls around conventional weapons and dual-use goods and technologies. The U.S. has long been a party to this agreement, and India officially joined in 2018. Arguments persist about the extent to which Beijing is involved in these dual-use surveillance technology exports, but these exports may only increase going forward as companies increasingly sell not just internet surveillance tools but also dual-use AI tools. In this way, too, India and the U.S. could play an important role in countering the spread of such capabilities to human-rights abusers and standing against the spread of digital authoritarianism in the process.

The relationship here is, therefore, one that requires careful navigation for its significant geopolitical, economic, and ideological consequences. For the future of the technological relationship between the world’s largest democracies—and the extent to which they respect each other’s strategic autonomy while converging on issues of mutual interest—could determine the future of global digital governance.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/the-diplomat-justin-sherman-and-arindrajit-basu-july-3-2019-fostering-strategic-convergence-in-us-india-tech-relations-5g-and-beyond

AI for Good Workshop

Admin — 2019-06-05T14:47:27Z

Pranav Manjesh Bidare attended a workshop on AI for Good, organised by Swissnex India, and Wadhwani AI in Bangalore on May 22, 2019.

The workshop was a forerunner to the AI for Good Global Summit. More recommendations can be made at https://www.policykitchen.com/group/19/stream

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/ai-for-good-workshop

MWC19 Shanghai AI and Trust in APAC and China

Admin — 2019-06-05T07:10:50Z

Sunil Abraham will be making a presentation at the summit on AI and Trust in APAC and China at MWC19 Shanghai on June 27, 2019. Sunil has been invited as a speaker on panel ‘Framing AI for Digital Upstarts’.

MWC Shanghai is a three-day conference and exhibition bringing together over 200 AI business leaders, 65,000 attendees, and 550 companies from across different industries and perspectives to address business and technical concerns in the Intelligent Connectivity era and debate tough problems for today and tomorrow. More info here. For event details see this page.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/mwc19-shanghai-ai-and-trust-in-apac-and-china

Banking on artificial intelligence: In hiring drive, Bots are calling the shots now

Anjali Venugopalan — 2019-07-02T05:38:26Z

Algorithms analyse expressions, tone to check for traits such as confidence, anger in video interviews.

The article by Anjali Venugopalan was published in Economic Times on June 4, 2019, Sunil Abraham was quoted. Also mirrored on ET Tech.com.

The future of hiring is already upon us. Algorithms are analysing people’s expressions and tone of voice to check for traits such as “confidence” and “happiness” during video interviews. The robotic video assessment software is then used to hire candidates — customer service operators and assistant vice presidents alike — though the process comes with its own set of problems.

Axis Bank used algorithm-based video interviews — along with aptitude tests — to hire around 2,000 customer service officers from a pool of more than 40,000 applicants this year, said Rajkamal Vempati, HR head of the private sector bank, adding it could standardise and scale up the process of hiring.

HR managers only gave offer letters, he said.

Nirmal Singh, CEO of Wheebox, a division of PeopleStrong which carried out the hiring, said it trained the face-indexing software — sourced from Microsoft — using around 50,000 candidates who had applied to Axis Bank in 2017. The software picked up emotional states such as “nervousness” and “happiness” based on eye movements, expressions and tone of voice and marked the candidates, Singh said. Scores from candidates who were shortlisted were used to come up with the “cutoff ” for these traits. Nirmal Singh, CEO of Wheebox, a division of PeopleStrong which carried out the hiring, said it trained the face-indexing software — sourced from Microsoft — using around50,000 candidates who had applied to Axis Bank in 2017. The software picked up emotional states such as “nervousness” and “happiness” based on eye movements,expressions and tone of voice and marked the candidates, Singh said. Scores from candidates who were shortlisted were used to come up with the “cutoff ” for these traits.

Insurance provider Bajaj Allianz has hired more than 1,600 people, including underwriters and assistant vice presidents, with the help of robotic video assessments that analysed behaviour, said Vikramjeet Singh, chief HR officer, adding it could help reduce human bias. Insurance provider Bajaj Allianz has hired more than 1,600 people, including underwriters and assistant vice presidents, with the help of robotic video assessments that analysedbehaviour, said Vikramjeet Singh, chief HR officer, adding it could help reduce human bias.

Concerns over Software's Biases

Talview, a Palo Alto-headquartered company with operations in Singapore and the United States, provided the assessment for the insurer.

The software, sourced from Microsoft and IBM, can analyse states such as “anger” and “happiness” from expressions, “confidence” from voice tone and traits like “ability to work ina team” and “decisiveness” from text analysis, according to Rajeev Menon, chief product officer, Talview.

Candidates may be able to beat questionnaires by giving expected answers to questions like “Can you work in a team?”, but video assessments pick up on subtleties in expression and vocabulary, and cannot be gamed, Menon said.Be that as it may, Amazon.com scrapped its artificial intelligence-based recruiting system after it found the AI system biased against women, according to an October 2018 report by Reuters.

The AI system was drawing on data from the past, where more men had made it into the company than women.“If you can fool a human, you can fool a computer,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of Centre for Internet and Society.Recruitment algorithms could “homogenise the emotional economy” by forcing people to act a certain way, he said.

Since the software is based on expressions and tone of voice, it could disadvantage less expressive people, like those who are autistic, said Wheebox’s Singh.

Facial recognition by companies such as IBM, Microsoft and Amazon got the gender of a dark-skinned woman wrong one out of three times (20-35% error rate), a 2018 study by MIT researcher Joy Buolamwini found. For white males, the error was 0.8%.

Video Assessments

Facial recognition has nothing to do with video analytics, Wheebox’s Singh said. The two are, however, closely linked, said Animashree Anandkumar, professor of computing andmathematical science at California Institute of Technology.

She said such software was “deeply problematic”, as it could correlate wrong factors (likegender or skin colour) and show that as the cause for success. It is possible dark-skinned people would be disadvantaged, said Menon of Talview. Thecompany uses facial expression as just one input among many and gives it a low weightage, he said.The software they use is only 39% accurate, and will improve with more data, said and will improve with more data, said Ridhima Gauba, co-founder of Interview Air, a Navi Mumbai-based company that provides a similar service to companies and colleges.

Companies also say video assessments are a risky business.

Bajaj Allianz does not use video assessments for recruitments beyond middle management. It is “important to see a person physically” when hiring for senior positions, said Asha Sharma, manager (corporate HR) of Everest Industries.

The company, however, uses pre-recorded video interviews — where the computer asks questions — to hire juniors from campuses, she said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-anjali-venugopalan-june-4-2019-banking-on-artificial-intelligence

Artificial Intelligence and Data Initiative

Admin — 2019-05-14T15:06:02Z

On 3 May 2019 Arindrajit Basu attended a meeting of the Artificial Intelligence and Data Initiative held at IIC in Delhi. I am a member of the Working Group and co-authoring a report with Anindya Chaudhuri of Global Development Network on the prospect of collaborations in Public uses of AI.

The agenda can be viewed here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/artificial-intelligence-and-data-initiative

Society 5.0 and Artificial Intelligence with a Human Face

Admin — 2019-05-14T14:51:56Z

On 10 May 2019 Radhika Radhakrishnan attended a stakeholder's roundtable consultation on "Society 5.0 and Artificial Intelligence with a Human Face", organized by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. The event aimed to chart a roadmap for India’s participation at the G20, under the Japanese Presidency.

The agenda can be found here. Radhika's inputs were primarily focused on the feminist and gender implications of publicly deployed AI models, challenges and opportunities for academic AI-focused research in the Global South, recommendations for AI capacity building and skilling in the Global South, and regulation of black-box AI.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/society-5-0-and-artificial-intelligence-with-a-human-face

Curating Genderlog India's Twitter handle

Admin — 2019-05-14T14:40:08Z

Shweta Mohandas has been nominated to curate Genderlog's Twitter handle (@genderlogindia).

Shweta Mohandas will be tweeting about topics related to gender and data, more specifically around AI, big data, privacy and surveillance. To view the tweets, click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/curating-genderlog-indias-twitter-handle

Policy Lab on Artificial Intelligence & Democracy

Admin — 2019-04-12T01:32:32Z

Shweta Mohandas participated in a policy lab on Artificial Intelligence & Democracy in India organised by Tandem Research, in partnership with Microsoft Research and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung on 2 & 3 April, 2019, in Bangalore.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/news/policy-lab-on-artificial-intelligence-democracy

Roundtable on Consumer Experiences with New Technologies in APAC (Singapore)

Admin — 2019-04-15T10:25:57Z

Arindrajit Basu was invited to a Roundtable on Artificial Intelligence:Consumer Experiences with New Technologies (APAC region).

The event was hosted by Consumer International and delivered at Google, Singapore on March 26, 2019. CIS research and Arindrajit's inputs have been quoted in a report by the same name which will be released by Consumer International within the course of the next month.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/roundtable-on-consumer-experiences-with-new-technologies-in-apac-singapore

International Conference on Justice Education:Legal Implications of Artificial Intelligence

Admin — 2019-03-20T15:52:29Z

Arindrajit Basu attended the International Conference on Justice Education with the theme "Artificial Intelligence and its Legal Implications" at Institute of Law Nirma University. The event was organized by Nirma University in Ahmedabad on March 15 - 16, 2019. Arindrajit was a theme speaker for the panel on Legal Implications of Artificial Intelligence and was a judge of the presentations in the same session.

Click to read the agenda

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/international-conference-on-justice-education-legal-implications-of-artificial-intelligence

Artificial Intelligence for India's Transformation

Admin — 2019-03-20T01:38:48Z

ASSOCHAM's 3rd International Conference was organized at Hotel Imperial in New Delhi. Amber Sinha a session on use, impact and ethics in AI.

Click to view the agenda.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/artificial-intelligence-for-indias-transformation

OWASP Seasides Conference

Admin — 2019-03-07T23:53:47Z

Karan Saini attended the OWASP Seasides security conference held on February 27 and 28, 2019 at Cavelossim, Goa. The event was organized by OWASP Seasides.

For conference details click here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/owasp-seasides-conference

Unbox Festival 2019: CIS organizes two Workshops

saumyaa — 2019-02-26T01:53:39Z

Centre for Internet & Society organized two workshops at the Unbox Festival 2019, in Bangalore, on 15 and 17 February 2019.

'What is your Feminist Infrastructure Wishlist?

The first workshop 'What is your Feminist Infrastructure Wishlist?' was on Feminist Infrastructure Wishlists that was conducted by P.P. Sneha and Saumyaa Naidu on 15 February 2019. The objective of the workshop was to explore what it means to have infrastructure that is feminist. How do we build spaces, networks, and systems that are equal, inclusive, diverse, and accessible? We will also reflect on questions of network configurations, expertise, labour and visibility. For reading material click here.

AI for Good

With a backdrop of AI for social good, we explore existing applications of artificial intelligence, how we interact and engage with this technology on a daily basis. A discussion led by Saumyaa Naidu and Shweta Mohandas invited participants to examine current narratives around AI and imagine how these may transform with time. Questions around how we can build an AI for the future will become the starting point to trace its implications relating to social impact, policy, gender, design, and privacy. For reading materials see AI Now Report 2018, Machine Bias, and Why Do So Many Digital Assistants Have Feminine Names?

For info on Unbox Festival, click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/unbox-2019-festival