Leading Responsible Tech Organization All Tech Is Human Announces $2.5 Million in New Funding to Tackle Thorny Tech & Society Issues and Expand the Responsible Tech Ecosystem
A scene from our Responsible Tech Summit held in NYC in September 2023 which featured speakers Sherry Turkle, Frances Haugen, Tim Wu, Nabiha Syed, Sinead Bovell and more.
(Monday, February 26, New York, New York) Thanks to the generous support of Oak Foundation, Siegel Family Endowment, Mozilla Foundation, Schmidt Futures, and the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, All Tech Is Human (ATIH) is proud to announce that it has secured $2.5 million in new funding that furthers its mission of tackling thorny tech and society issues and building a robust Responsible Tech ecosystem.
“Re-envisioning the intersection of technology and human dignity is a critical inquiry if we hope to create new resilience in a time of accelerating societal change,” said Patrick J. McGovern Foundation President Vilas Dhar. “Our investment in All Tech is Human's work recognizes their potential to actively construct a diverse, global ecosystem to find new solutions and build broad consensus on digital challenges. ATIH and the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation share a commitment to moving quickly and responsibly, prioritizing lived experience and shared intelligence, and diversifying the tech pipeline to ensure a responsible, safe, and inclusive technological future.”
“We are proud to support All Tech is Human in its important efforts towards inspiring the future designs of new online platforms that prevent harm to children,” said Vicky Rateau, Campaigns Programme Officer at Oak Foundation.
Key areas of focus for All Tech Is Human include Responsible AI, Trust & Safety, and Public Interest Technology. With this funding, All Tech Is Human will expand and improve its activities that aim at community-building, multidisciplinary education, and diversifying the traditional tech pipeline to better match the complexity of problems we face.
The ability to improve our tech future is dependent on robust multistakeholder coalitions, educational initiatives for a broad audience, and a diverse range of individuals working to ensure that technology is designed, developed, and deployed in the public interest. Pressing issues like online harms reduction, ensuring that AI is a net positive for society, and content moderation challenges in digital spaces require broad participation and rapid movement.
“Our current approach to tackling complex tech and society problems just isn’t working,” said David Ryan Polgar, Founder and President of All Tech Is Human. “Everyone knows we have a ‘tech problem,’ so awareness campaigns don’t move the needle. What we need is a better approach that can quickly coalesce key stakeholders and understand a wide range of values, best practices, and inevitable trade-offs involved with complex problems.”
Founded in 2018, All Tech Is Human has spent five years mapping the Responsible Tech ecosystem and building a vibrant global community through events, working groups, roundtables, and a Slack community of over 8,000 members across 89 countries. Its mentorship program has uplifted over 1,000 community members, and widely-used resources like its Responsible Tech Guide contain interviews of hundreds of leaders across civil society, government, the tech industry, and academia to better understand the tools to build a better tech future. All Tech Is Human also offers a popular Responsible Tech Job Board and talent pool of over 6k individuals, including early involvement in Tekalo, which it now manages to provide free talent matchmaking to non-profits and individuals looking for social impact roles. Given the significant community the non-profit has built, they now have a powerful network poised to take on some of our most vexing issues related to tech.
“All Tech Is Human meets a critical need in movement-building efforts for the Public Interest Technology ecosystem,” said Madison Snider, Research Associate at Siegel Family Endowment. “Through its “all-are-welcome” approach, convening power, and community-building efforts, their passionate team is an invaluable resource for both those who are new to responsible tech as well as those who have been in this area for years. Sara M. Watson, who is serving as the Siegel Research Fellow from ATIH this year, is applying her analytical acumen to investigate the state of the field of responsible tech to help individuals, companies, and other organizations identify gaps and opportunities. The impact of that work will reverberate across many of our grantees and the broader Public Interest Technology community.”
“ATIH’s extensive higher ed research and capacity to organize and mobilize student clubs across the academic ecosystem has helped inform the next phase of Mozilla’s Responsible Computing Challenge,” said Program Lead, Steven Azeka. “Mozilla and ATIH’s ongoing partnership is about activating students and clearing the pathway to industry. With additional funding partners, we aim to build a global, centralized Responsible Tech Job Board to set up the quickly growing field of Public Interest Technology for success.”
All Tech Is Human’s strength lies in moving at the speed of tech, leveraging collective intelligence, diversifying the pipeline to allow for a more holistic approach to problem-solving, altering the DNA of tech development, and helping society catch up to the speed of innovation. The non-profit’s unique approach and successful community-building model will be covered in a chapter in New York Times bestselling author Greg Epstein’s book, How Technology Became the World's Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation.
All Tech Is Human will hold a gathering on February 28th in Washington, DC about reducing online harms and strengthening the Trust & Safety field, and a joint event with the Finnish Consulate in NYC on March 6th about strengthening the information ecosystem, and a Responsible Tech Mixer in NYC on March 11. In addition, they are currently planning a high-level global gathering for one hundred Trust & Safety leaders and key civil society organizations that will take place this summer. Their most recent report about the 2024 Responsible Tech Org List mapped over 600 global Responsible Tech organizations and was released in January, and their next version of the Responsible Tech Guide will arrive in September.
Together, we work to solve tech and society’s thorniest issues.
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MEDIA CONTACT: Josh@AllTechIsHuman.org
General Inquiries: Hello@AllTechIsHuman.org
Read a profile of All Tech Is Human featured in the MIT Technology Review
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Line waiting to get into our Responsible Tech Mixer in NYC on October 9, 2023 which featured special guest Kashmir Hill
Frequently Asked Questions about All Tech Is Human:
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All Tech Is Human was founded in 2018 in NYC by David Ryan Polgar. In 2019, All Tech Is Human held a summit in NYC, an event w/ WEF in NYC, a summit in SF, and a summit in Seattle. With funding from Ford Foundation and the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation in mid-2021, All Tech Is Human was able to grow into a 501c3 org (through our fiscal sponsor, Hopewell Fund).
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All Tech Is Human is synonymous with the Responsible Tech movement. Thousands of individuals utilize our free resources, take part in our mentorship program and working groups, attend our gatherings, share resources and build community through our Slack, and more.
Thousands of individuals are now part of the Responsible Tech movement thanks to the support All Tech Is Human provided with its guidance and support. With our focus on community, education, and diversifying the traditional tech pipeline, All Tech Is Human is building a more cohesive movement better capable to tackling complex tech & society issues and altering the DNA of how technology is designed, developed, and deployed.
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Our current approach to complex tech & society issues is not working. The speed of innovation is greatly outstripping our ability to consider its impact, we do not have an appropriate mix of backgrounds involved in the process, and we do not have enough knowledge-sharing and collaboration throughout the ecosystem.
All Tech Is Human is building a better approach to how we can tackle thorny tech & society issues. Structured as a complex adaptive system, we leverage the collective intelligence of the community, diversify the traditional tech pipeline, and move at the speed of tech.
We are designed to understand the ecosystem while influencing it at the same time. Our wide range of activities provide perpetual insight and the ability to reach thousands of individuals across civil society, government, industry, and academia.
Change happens through our community-building, educational resources, and career-related activities. -
The Responsible Tech Guide is the flagship resource for All Tech Is Human, providing an overview of the people, organizations, and ideas of the Responsible Tech movement.
The first Responsible Tech Guide was released in September 2020; a new version is released every September. Hundreds of individuals have been involved in working groups that have updated and expanded this essential resource for the Responsible Tech ecosystem.
The Responsible Tech Guide can be downloaded for no cost at: ResponsibleTechGuide.com
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David Ryan Polgar is the Founder and President of All Tech Is Human, an organization that has become synonymous with the Responsible Tech movement. His work building a large and diverse community of individuals coming together to tackle wicked problems was recently covered in the MIT Technology Review and will be an entire chapter in Greg Epstein's upcoming book, Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World’s Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation.
David is also an international speaker and regular commentator on increasing ethical considerations regarding emerging technology, improving social media platforms, and the need for a collaborative, multi-stakeholder, and multidisciplinary approach to building a tech future that is aligned with the public interest. His commentary has been featured in The Guardian, TODAY show, BBC World News, MSNBC, Fast Company, Associated Press, LA Times, USA Today, and many more. He has been on stage at Harvard Business School, Yale School of Management, Princeton University, NATO's Stratcom Summit (Istanbul), TechChill (Latvia), The Next Web (Amsterdam), FutureNow (Slovakia), Infoshare (Poland), and more.
His work with All Tech Is Human is focused on creating a better approach to tackling the thorniest issues in tech and society. This approach involves leveraging the collective intelligence of the community, diversifying the underlying tech pipeline, and being able to move at the speed of tech. Outside of All Tech Is Human, David sits on TikTok’s Content Advisory Council (US) and is also a member of Teleperformance's Trust & Safety Advisory Council. He appears in the recently-released documentary, TikTok, Boom.
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All Tech Is Human is intentionally designed with elements of both a grassroots organization and a traditional think tank. Why? Because this solves two major problems:
Grassroot movements often have access to the best ideas and most passionate individuals, but often lack access to traditional levers of power and necessary money to implement change.
Traditional top-down structures may have power and money, but they often lack access to pain points, emerging trends, and powerful ideas because they are insulated from the general public.
All Tech Is Human is uniquely positioned within the broader community while also maintaining access to key levers of power.
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The Responsible Tech Job Board is the premiere resource to discover careers in Responsible Tech, featuring hundreds of roles across Responsible AI, Trust & Safety, Cybersecurity, Tech & Democracy, Software Development & more!
The Responsible Tech Job Board was launched by Rebekah Tweed, our Executive Director, in 2020.
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A thorny tech & society issue is one in which there is disagreement about root causes and the best course of action to solve the problem or reduce the harm. Thorny tech & society issues often have unclear legal terrain. In addition, thorny tech & society require an understanding of different values, best practices, tensions, and tradeoffs.
All Tech Is Human is designed to tackle thorny tech & society issues by creating an agnostic environment that unites a broad range of stakeholders and allows to wide participation.
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Douglas Rushkoff, Kashmir Hill, Frances Haugen, Jameel Jaffer, Jessica Rosenworcel, Joy Buolamwini, Julia Angwin, Julie Inman Grant, Justin Hendrix, Kate Klonick, Maya Wiley, Meredith Broussard, Nabiha Syed, Reid Blackman, Rumman Chowdhury, Sinead Bovell, Sherry Turkle, Suzanne Nossel, Tim Wu, Tracy Chou, Yael Eisenstat, Yoel Roth, and many more!
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“All Tech Is Human” means that all technology derives from human decisions. This places an emphasis on the role of human agency in creating a tech future that aligns with our values to ultimately create a brighter future.
Our future is not pre-determined. It is up to us to co-create a better tech future.
