Digital Futures Lab/Issue #15: 2023 in Review; 2024 in Focus!
2023 was a big one for Digital Futures Lab: we hosted workshops, curated panels, published papers and op-eds, were invited to the GPAI Summit, RightsCon and the Trust Conference, and teamed up with organisations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Research ICT Africa, Pollicy, and the Rockefeller Foundation!
We also built out our work on AI - covering AI for climate action in Asia, AI in the Indian court system, gender biases in LLM applications in India, and the invisibilised labour of the data annotation industry for generative AI, among other projects. Learnings, insights and findings will be coming out this year!
Here’s what to expect in 2024, before we look back on 2023👇🏽
coming up in 2024 🌟
Gender Bias and Large Language Models in India
This year, we start field research for our project on Gender Equity in LLM applications in India. Our project asks if there are any gender-related harms, such as gender bias, that may arise through the development and usage of LLM applications for Indian populations, and how these may be mitigated.
If you’re building LLMs or developing LLM applications for social impact in India, we would love to connect with you!
AI + Climate Action in Asia
With a network of experts from across the region, we spent a lot of last year looking at the intersection of AI and climate action in Asia - exploring the opportunities, challenges, and risks. We’ll be sharing our findings shortly on a wide range of issues, including climate data governance, indigenous data rights, participatory technology development, and the future of agriculture.
Feminist Futures Now: Working Toward Gender-Equitable Digital Futures
With the support of the American Jewish World Service, DFL will host ‘Feminist Futures Now’ in early March - a 2.5-day workshop that brings together key stakeholders from tech policy, civil society, government and philanthropy to deliberate pathways toward gender-equitable digital futures.
AI Procurement Guidelines for the Government of Telangana
DFL supported the Government of Telangana and GIZ FAIR Forward to develop guidelines for AI procurement by the public sector. The guidelines involved extensive multi-stakeholder engagement for over a year. Reflecting on the guidelines, the Government of Telangana has constituted an Ethics Committee to guide AI procurement. The guidelines will be made publicly available soon!
Strengthening AI Ethics Practices in LMICs
In 2024, we continue our work as a Responsible AI advisor to grantees of the BMGF Grand Challenges fund. We’re supporting social impact organisations to think through and resolve the ethical challenges and social risks that may arise from the use of Generative AI applications for development programming in low-resource contexts. A publication with all our learnings is in the pipeline!
looking back at 2023 ⏮
research highlights 📑
⚖️ Smart Automation and AI in the Indian Judicial System: A Case of Organised Irresponsibility?
Founding Director Urvashi Aneja and Researcher Dona Mathew mapped the emerging uses of AI in the Indian Judicial system, along with the key actors and narratives and adoption challenges. The report argues that a scattered approach to automation and AI use, without due deliberation and legislative processes, increases the risk of harm. Their report offers a set of recommendations for responsible innovation in this space based on an 'ethic of care'.
🕸 Unpacking Digital Public Infrastructure: Navigating Conceptual Ambiguities
In their policy brief for the Think 20 – the official engagement group of the G20 – Research Manager Aarushi Gupta and Researcher Aman Nair 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.
🍀A New Research Agenda for African Generative AI
Dona contributed to an article in Nature which examines the importance of a contextualised research agenda, grounded in a Global South Context, for developing and using generative AI tools.
🧯 Beyond Content Moderation: Additional Approaches to Addressing the Spread of Harmful Content on Social Media Platforms
Urvashi and Aman wrote a policy brief that examines the limitations of content moderation in addressing the spread of harmful content on social media. It recommends a range of content-agnostic strategies, including enhancing user agency and limiting algorithmic amplification.
🌍 “Are We Together?”
How do non-English users experience the usability, accessibility and trustworthiness of digital spaces? What challenges do they face, and how do they navigate these challenges? Pollicy, DFL and Design Beku spent the last year exploring these questions. Based on 4 case studies across India and Africa, we developed a design brief to support linguistically inclusive application design.
events & workshops🪛
Urvashi spoke at the opening ceremony of RightsCon Costa Rica 2023, along with WIRED’s Editor-in-Chief, Gideon Lichfield, and Google and Alphabet’s President of Global Affairs, Kent Walker.
At the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence 2023 Summit held in New Delhi, India, DFL and Civic Data Lab organised a panel discussion on AI for Climate Action: Accelerating Sustainable Solutions.
Urvashi was invited to a panel discussion on Generative AI’s impact on the labour market at the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s Trust Conference in London in October last year. She talked about how tech companies might engage with communities they are attempting to design tech for, versus compelling communities to have to upskill to use them. You can watch the discussion here!
OASIS Summit: Responsible Data Practices for Social Impact Organisations: A Participatory Workshop on Data Harms and Ethics’ was hosted by Urvashi, Researcher Anushka Jain and Public Engagement Manager Sasha John at the OASIS Summit which brought together practitioners from the social impact space to discuss best practices around responsible data management.
Aarushi spoke on a panel at the Data Privacy Global Conference in São Paulo, Brazil. The panel focused on the role of data protection authorities in regulating new technologies such as Generative AI.
media ✍🏽
Urvashi and Dona had an op-ed published in the Hindustan Times on how we need a more judicious approach to developing AI for climate action - one based on a participatory and inclusive political vision for climate action, and not market dynamics alone.
Anushka was quoted in a DW article on India’s potential legislation to regulate deepfakes.
Urvashi was brought on as a guest on India Today's Newstrack segment with Rahul Kanwal, where she spoke about the need for greater transparency around the data being collected and curated to create AI tools and systems.
Urvashi and Dona’s study on smart automation and artificial intelligence in India's judiciary was cited in features by Reuters (via The Hindu) and The Signal, which touched on the risks of incorporating AI in the Indian court system, as well as in articles by Bar and Bench and The Japan Times.
Aarushi was quoted in a Context by Reuters article on the risk of health data in India getting breached.
Urvashi was quoted in a Context by Reuters op-ed on how AI could potentially amplify existing racism, sexism and casteism in India.
team 👩🏽💻
Our team grew over the last few months of 2023!
Meet Yean Fai Liu, our new Operations Manager,
Gulal Salil, our new Communications and Design Associate, and
Abhishek Morajkar, our new accountant!
We may be hiring again in February, so be on the lookout!
We’ve got our fingers crossed, research hats ready and noses to the grindstone for some incredible work this year - stay tuned! 👀
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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