Session
IGF 2018 Report
“Emerging Technologies: Fostering benefits, managing risks through multistakeholder governance”
- Session Type: Panel discussion - Main Session
- Title: Emerging Technologies: Fostering benefits, managing risks through multistakeholder governance
- Date & Time: Monday, 12 November 2018, 10:00-11:20
- Organizer(s): Christoph Steck, Nataša Glavor, Wafa Dahmani, Raquel Gatto
- Chair/Moderator: Vladimi Radunović, Ogla Cavalli
- Rapporteur/Notetaker: Gonzalo Lopez-Barajas Huder
- List of speakers and their institutional affiliations (Indicate male/female/ transgender male/ transgender female/gender variant/prefer not to answer):
– Lorena Jaume-Palasi, Civil Society, Germany, WEOG, Algorithmic Decision Making Manifesto - Algorithm Watch(female)
– Layla El Asri, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG), Research Manager (female)
– Satish Babu, Chair, APRALO, ICANN At-Large, Asia-Pacific Group (male)
– Maart en Botterman, Civil Society, WEOG, ICANN Board, Dynamic Coalition on the Internet of Things (male)
– David Redl,Government (USA) Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information at the United States Department of Commerce. (male)
- Theme (as listed here):
- How should governance for the development and adoption of emerging technologies be approached?
- How can transparency and accountability be assured? What does it mean for each technology?
- How are ethics to be considered from a policy perspective? Can ethical considerations be enshrined in technologies? Are there relevant approaches that could be shared as best practices?
(3) key messages of the discussion.
- accountability of algorithmic decisions: transparency of code is a first step, but interpretability of Algorithms might be needed; a question from the audience even raised the issue defining a human responsibility and accountability for any decision taken by AI.
- Code is a reflexion of the people who have coded and influenced it, it changes over time and across cultures, so is there some global ethics? Nevertheless ethics might be needed to guide a responsible approach to AI when regulation and laws can not keep up with the speed of technology developments
- it is needed to be more focused on people already in its development
- Please elaborate on the discussion held, specifically on areas of agreement and divergence.
It was noted emerging tech are not going to be ubiquitous and thus adoption is going to be an individual decision, but audience responded everyone is forced to move into the same direction and to adopt emerging tech.
Also disagreement on the question if emerging technology would need just compliance with consumer protection laws or specific ethics that go beyond mere compliance with regulation (that might be outdated due to the fast development of technology)
- Please describe any policy recommendations or suggestions regarding the way forward/potential next steps.
- instead of using ethics as something we need to enshrine in technologies, would it be better to use principles defined in UN Declaration on Human Rights that is less dependent on national, cultural and other differences and has a broader consensus within countries worldwide
- Fairness is first success of building ethical approach. Most people agree algorithms should be fair, that means they should treat different groups of people equally (they should not be discriminating)
- What ideas surfaced in the discussion with respect to how the IGF ecosystem might make progress on this issue?
- accountability of algorithmic decisions: transparency of code is a first step, but interpretability of Algorithms might be needed; a question from the audience even raised the issue defining a human responsible for any decision taken by AI.
- do we need a ethical approach to AI and algorithm or is it sufficient to have consumer protection and that people adopt these technologies voluntarily?
- Code is a reflexion of the people who have coded and influenced it, it changes over time and across cultures, so is there some global ethics? Nevertheless ethics might be needed to guide a responsible approach to AI when regulation and laws can not keep up with the speed of technology developments
- Hands off approach on regulating AI, because consumer protection can protect people who have bought services.
- feedback from the audience proposed a global approach based on applying human rights as globally accepted values and standards to technology usage .
Ethics differ across cultures and geographies, but if we build technologies with a global approach, developers may need a single guidance.
- Please estimate the total number of participants. 200
- Please estimate the total number of women and gender-variant individuals present. 100
The panel was made up by 3 male and 2 females and co-moderators have been male and female.
- To what extent did the session discuss gender issues, and if to any extent, what was the discussion? [100 words] This was a gender agnostic panel discussion :)
1. Title/Date and Time/Length of the Session
Title: Emerging Technologies: Fostering benefits, managing risks through multistakeholder governance
Length: 80 minutes
Format: Panel discussion
Venue: UNESCO / room Salle 1, Monday 12 November 10:00-11:20
2. Brief Description/Objective:
As the development and adoption of new technology into our daily lives is taking place at a pace never seen before, societies, policymakers and businesses are confronted with complex issues that they have never encountered before. Artificial Intelligence, 5G, blockchain, and the Internet of Things have the potential to bring social, cultural, and economic benefits to all. But their same decentralized and autonomous independence features enabling such progress bring along relevant issues around the governance of such systems, who is responsible, why the systems respond the way they do and how we can ethical considerations be included. For emerging technologies to be at the service of mankind and foster a human centered digitalization, they must be guided by well-informed, sound, and sustainable policies.
This main session will address governance, transparency and accountability, and ethics in emerging technologies.
3. Agenda
Moderators will provide a brief 3 min. introduction to the topic to set the scene. They will open the poll (using Mentimeter) to ask the audience “What are the emerging technologies to discuss?”; participants will be invited to cast their vote, and the word cloud of responses will be shown on the main screen. Moderators introduce the format and panelists.
The panel will be divided in three 15 minute blocks, one for each of the policy questions. During each block some panelist will provide their views for the technology of their expertise on policy question addressed (2-3min each). Each block is to be followed by a 8 minute open mic to enable public participation by expressing their views or addressing questions to the panellists. (5+15+8+15+8+15+8=74)
Additional polls (using Mentimeter) will be set, such as asking the audience to position various mentioned emerging tech (IoT, blockchain AI, virtual/augmented reality, …) based on potentials (low/high) and risks/challenges (low/high); again, discussion will continue while participants cast their votes, and results will be shown in realtime.
In the remaining 6 minutes the rapporteurs will provide a brief summary of the session and the room will be vacated and arranged for the next session.
4. Policy Questions
- How can transparency and accountability be assured? What does it mean for each technology?
- How are ethics to be considered from a policy perspective? Can ethical considerations be enshrined in technologies? Are there relevant approaches that could be shared as best practices?
- How should governance for the development and adoption of emerging technologies be approached?
5. Chair(s) and/or Moderator(s)
Main Session Organisers / facilitators: Christoph Steck
Co-facilitators: Wafa Dahmani, Raquel Gatto, Nataša Glavor
Moderators:
Vladimir Radunović (Diplo Foundation), Civil Society, Europe
Olga Cavalli, Government, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
6. Panelists/Speakers
- Lorena Jaume-Palasi, Civil Society, Germany, WEOG Algorithmic Decision Making Manifesto - Algorithm Watch
- Layla El Asri, Private Sector, Research Manager, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
- Satish Babu, Chair, APRALO, ICANN At-Large, Asia-Pacific Group
- Maarten Botterman, Civil Society, WEOG, ICANN Board, Dynamic Coalition on the Internet of Things
- David Redl, Government (USA) Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information at the United States Department of Commerce
7. Plan for in-room participant engagement/interaction?
8 minutes open mic sessions following each of three policy questions are planned for participants engagement. Moderators will try to pick a few questions/comments from the audience preferably coming from various stakeholder groups.
8. Remote moderator
Monica Trochez, SSIG fellow from Colombia
Laura Bretón, SSIG Fellow from República Dominicana and ISOC RD
Plan for online interaction?
Remote moderator – TBC/Online participants will also be able to take part in 8 minutes open mic sessions following each of three policy questions. Online and off-line moderators will ensure online participants’ partake in these open mic sessions
9. Connections with other sessions?
In order not to interfere and overlap with other IGF sessions covering the topic of any of the emerging technologies and focusing on ethical considerations, bias, transparency and explanation of results, responsibility, multi Stakeholder approach needed for AI, improving accessibility with AI, AI based abusive content removal) the purpose of this Main session would be to direct discussion to the specific question of governability of emerging technologies and make it serve as a complement to the other emerging technologies related sessions present on the IGF.
10. Desired results/output? Possible next steps for the work?
Agreeing on rapporteur summary presented at the end of the session. Publishing session messages, and if possible make those messages open to comments so it could be developed further. And also link messages from this session with messages from other Emerging Technologies related sessions present on the IGF.
Rapporteurs:
GONZALO LOPEZ-BARAJAS HUDER (Telefonica)
Additonal rapporteurs to be included if available. (Diplo?)