Digital Futures Lab/Issue #11: Discussing Digital Public Infrastructure, Data Annotators & DFL @ RightsCon!
The team at Digital Futures Lab has been making the rounds, attending international events and getting quoted in articles! ✈️
But of course, we also found time to squeeze in a Think20 policy brief! 💪🏽
Read all about it below! 👇🏽
research 📑
Researchers Aarushi Gupta and Aman Nair had their assessment of and recommendations on the deployment of Digital Public Infrastructure published in a Think20 policy brief. Think20 is an official Engagement Group of the G20.
There is a need to critically appraise whether and how the deployment of DPI has tangibly impacted citizens. Such assessments could include discussions around inaccessibility, exclusion, rights violation, and search costs. Aarushi and Aman critically summarise the assortment of definitions that exist around DPIs, articulate practical implications that such conceptual ambivalence may give rise to and propose a corresponding set of recommendations to the G20.
You can download or read the brief online here.
media ✍🏽
Up against Google and Alphabet’s President of Global Affairs Kent Walker, Founding Director Urvashi Aneja’s comments on AI at the Opening Ceremony for RightsCon Costa Rica 2023 were highlighted by MIT Technology Review and Paris Beacon.
Researchers Aman Nair and Aarushi Gupta wrote an op-ed on how the recent CoWIN data leak is a sign that India needs to rethink its Digital Public Infrastructure strategy, published in The Wire.
Researcher Shashidhar KJ was quoted in The Hindu’s Frontline magazine, in a piece on online gambling laws in India
Urvashi and Dona Mathew’s report on AI in the Indian judiciary were quoted in recent pieces on AI technology in the legal system in Bar and Bench and The Japan Times.
events 🎤
Digital Futures Lab had quite the run at RightsCon Costa Rica! 🇨🇷 👏🏽
Urvashi was in conversation with WIRED’s Editor-in-Chief, Gideon Lichfield, and Google and Alphabet’s President of Global Affairs, Kent Walker at the RightsCon Opening Ceremony. She was also a panellist on a Luminate Group session on re-imagining collective data rights protection in the 21st century.
Aman co-chaired a session on platform cooperatives with Cooperative UK, where they spoke to My Cool Class Co-op’s Heira Hardiyanti, Doc Servizi’s Dr. Francesca Martinelli and Karya Inc’s Manu Chopra about their experiences in seeding and developing platform cooperatives, the issues they've faced and the challenges they've overcome. 💪🏽 🤝
We hosted the 8th Tech and Society Dialogues session in June, on the data annotation industry in the Global South. Moderated by Aman, panellists Billy Perrigo (TIME Magazine), Dr. Noopur Raval (Computational Media at UC Santa Cruz) and Safiya Husain (Karya Inc) talked about the particularities of the work, where responsibility in the industry lies and how public AI literacy is just as crucial to changing work conditions.
Catch the full recording here!
knowledge exchange 🧠
Researcher Dona Mathew attended Research ICT Africa and the Gates Foundation’s design workshop on Generative AI in Kigali, Rwanda. The workshop explored methodological approaches for building evidence for responsible design and use of generative AI prototypes in key policy areas in Africa and India.
The Global Index on Responsible AI is a new tool being designed to equip governments, civil society, and stakeholders with the evidence needed to advance rights-based principles for the responsible use of AI. The project is being headed by Research ICT Africa, with DFL researcher Shashidhar KJ as the country researcher for India. Digital Futures Lab will be acting as a regional hub for the pilot. You can read more about the initiative here.
team 🧑🏻💻
Introducing the latest member of the DFL team, Aarushi Gupta!
Aarushi Gupta, Research Manager: Digital governance, social protection, Jeopardy!, crosswords
what we’re reading 📖
Sasha
📕 Inside the AI Factory by Josh Dzieza, The Verge
Aman
📕 Match Made by Humans: A Critical Enquiry into Human-Machine Configurations in Data Labelling by Srravya Chandhiramowuli and Bidisha Chaudhuri, IIT Bangalore
Shashi
📕 The 1970s librarians who revolutionised the challenge of search by Monica Westin, Aeon Essays
coming up ⏭
Digital Futures Lab, in collaboration with Point of View and Design Beku, is making an attempt at participatory AI! Supported by f<A+i>r (Feminist AI Research Network), this project looks to see if it’s possible to build a functional and effective AI-based intervention to address a specific issue under the umbrella of ‘technology-facilitated, gender-based violence’.
Have an idea for creative collaboration, a future Tech and Society Dialogues event or a research partnership? Reach out to our Comms & Public Engagement Manager, Sasha John, at sasha@digitalfutureslab.in or @SashaEmJay on Twitter.
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