Speakers: Sophie Zhang (US), Renata Ávila (GT), Evgeny Morozov (BY/US)
Moderation: Frederike Kaltheuner (DE)

Guided by an invisible hand, the dissolution of commons in meatspace is pretty apparent. Less visibly but equally as contested are digital space territories where wars are waged every nanosecond to determine ownership of vast swatches of the data landscape. While feudal owners of digital space still perpetuate the lie of its capacity towards infinite growth, the fight against autocracy of the few especially grabby mega corporations continues.

AI x Feudalism looks at how artificial intelligence doesn’t just yoke individual data equity to the plough of the feudal machine, but how it inspires dissent, informed consent and a thirst for equality that, for once, leaves no-one behind.

Moderation:

Frederike Kaltheuner (DE): She is a tech policy analyst, researcher and advocate for justice in a world made of data. She is a 2019-2020 public interest Tech Policy Fellow at the Mozilla Foundation. Since June 2020, she is also the fund manager of the European AI Fund, a philanthropic initiative to strengthen civil society in Europe. Previously she was a Director at the London-based NGO Privacy International, where she led the organisation’s work on corporate surveillance. Her team’s technical investigations into the murky world of online advertising have led to statutory inquiries by regulators, and caused some of the world’s most downloaded apps to change their practices.

Speakers:

Sophie Zhang (US): She became a whistleblower after spending 2 years and 8 months at Facebook failing to fix the company from within. She personally caught two nations using Facebook to manipulate their own citizenry, while also revealing concerning decisions made by Facebook regarding inauthenticity in Indian and U.S. politics. Formerly a data scientist, she currently stays home to pet her cats.

Renata Ávila Pinto (GT): She is an international Human Rights lawyer working at the intersection of tech, politics and experimental multilateralism. She is an Affiliate with the Stanford Institute of Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. She co-founded the Alliance for Inclusive Algorithms, the Progressive International and the Polylateral Association.

Evgeny Morozov (BY): Evgeny Morozov (1984, Salihorsk, Belarus) is an American writer and researcher who studies the political and social implications of technology. Morozov’s writings have appeared in various newspapers and magazines around the world. His books include The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (2011) and To Save Everything, Click Here(2013). Morozov is also the initiator of The Syllabus, a curated internet newsletter launched in 2019.

Credits

This conference is presented in the framework of the European ARTificial Intelligence Lab, which is co-funded by the Creative Europe Program of the European Union and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport.