Responsible Tech Summit: Embedding Accountability in the AI Era to take place on October 29th at The New York Times Center in Manhattan
On October 29, All Tech Is Human will convene the Responsible Tech Summit at The New York Times Center in Manhattan, bringing together leaders from across the Responsible Tech ecosystem for a day of dialogue, collaboration, and action. The summit will serve as the premier gathering for the global Responsible Tech movement, connecting voices from civil society, research, government, industry, academia, and philanthropy who are working to ensure technology advances in ways that align with the public interest.
At a time when artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping society, the conversation is shifting from broad principles to real-world accountability. The 2026 summit will center around the theme “From Principles to Power: Embedding Accountability in the AI Era.” For years, the Responsible Tech field has been guided by ethical frameworks, voluntary commitments, and emerging standards. Today, the challenge is clear: how do we translate those ideas into systems of governance, oversight, and design that ensure innovation does not come at the expense of safety, rights, or trust?
About Our Summit
The Responsible Tech Summit is designed as a highly curated convening for 375 leaders that helps align and shape the direction of the movement. Participants will include global governance leaders, AI researchers, industry practitioners, policy experts, civil society advocates, and philanthropic leaders who are building the infrastructure of accountability for the digital age. Through keynotes, panels, and conversations, attendees will explore topics such as accountability by design, platform oversight, youth online safety, the Responsible Tech economy, and the evolving global regulatory landscape.
This will be the first Responsible Tech Summit that will be livestreamed, as we are building partnerships to amplify the stage activities to tens of thousands of individuals across the globe. This is a cross-sector gathering bringing the entire ecosystem together.
Our Speakers
Building on previous summits that have featured leading thinkers such as Sherry Turkle, Tim Wu, Frances Haugen, Justin Hendrix, Amba Kak, Rob Reich, Nora Benavidez, Nina Jankowicz, Yael Eisenstat, Jameel Jaffer, Melissa Fleming, Katie Harbath, and Nabiha Syed, the 2026 gathering will continue to elevate the voices shaping the future of technology governance. Confirmed speakers include leaders such as Rumman Chowdhury, Cathy O’Neil, Eli Pariser, Camille François, Sinead Bovell, Renée Cummings, Joshua Elder, Anya Schiffrin, Julie Cordua, Kathy Pham, Alex Bores, Britta Holmberg, Amanda Craig, Alexis Wales, Shreya Singh Hernández, Beth Goldberg, and more to be announced in the coming weeks.
Ultimately, the Responsible Tech Summit is about more than conversation. It is about building alliances, strengthening the ecosystem, and translating shared values into meaningful change. By bringing together stakeholders across sectors, All Tech Is Human aims to catalyze the next phase of the Responsible Tech movement and help chart a path toward a technology future that better serves humanity.
The Responsible Tech Summit is a place where:
policy ideas emerge
coalitions form
funding conversations happen
the ecosystem connects
All Tech Is Human is continuing to line up speakers and partners to make the Responsible Tech Summit the premiere gathering for the global Responsible Tech movement. Please fill out the form below for speaker suggestions, partner/sponsor interest, media inquires, and more.
Have a speaker recommendation? Email us hello@alltechishuman.org
Agenda for the Responsible Tech Summit
Welcome remarks from ATIH’s David Ryan Polgar and Andrew Rasiej (Founder, Civic Hall)
Panel: Beyond Benchmarks: Turning Evaluations into Enforceable Standards
This panel examines how to close the AI evaluations gap: what will it take to turn benchmarks and audits into standards that regulators can enforce and the public can trust. Panelists will explore who should define and verify what "good enough" means, how to keep evaluations meaningful as models evolve, and what lessons from other regulated industries can guide accountability for AI.
Rumman Chowdhury (CEO, Humane Intelligence PBC)
Cathy O’Neil (Founder, Author, Mathematician & Data Scientist, O’Neil Risk Consulting & Algorithmic Auditing)
Alex Bores (Assemblymember, New York City’s 73rd District)
Moderated by Courtney Radsch (Director of the Center for Media & Digital Governance, Open Markets Institute)
Lightning talk by Kathy Pham (Faculty and Senior Fellow, Responsible AI, Harvard University)
Panel: Safety by Design: Accountability at the Intersection of AI, Industry, and Advocacy
This panel brings together voices from industry, civil society, and research, who each see a different piece of safety by design in practice. They'll talk about what they've learned, what it looks like to work together, where collaboration still falls short, and what it takes to make safety commitments stick.
Julie Cordua (CEO, Thorn)
Britta Holmberg (Deputy Secretary General and Program Director, World Childhood Foundation)
Alexis Wales (Chief Information Security Officer, GitHub)
Moderated by Shreya Singh Hernandez (Senior Manager, Aspen Digital, The Aspen Institute)
Fireside Chat: Open-Source, Open Questions: Transparency in the Age of AI
What does "open" really mean in AI? Is openness a path to accountability or an opening for misuse? This panel explores risks and benefits for open source tools and whether transparency and safety have to be traded against each other.
Camille Francois (President, ROOST)
Moderated by Julia Angwin (Founder, Proof News)
Panel: Whose Values, Whose Risks? Rethinking Responsible AI Governance
This panel explores what more inclusive AI governance could look like and how to make it hold up in practice as the rules shaping it evolve.
Renée Cummings (Assistant Professor of Practice in Data Science, University of Virginia)
Amanda Craig (Manager, Responsible AI Public Policy, Microsoft)
Fernanda Del Castillo (Director of AI Governance, Mastercard)
Moderated by Riki Parikh (Policy Director, Alliance for Secure AI)
Fireside Chat: Alignment in Practice: Building AI That Wants to be Good
This panel will explore why alignment has moved from a distant worry to a practical business problem, and why no company can hand real responsibility to a system it can't predict. It’ll also look at research into approaches others aren't pursuing and tackle hard questions around the feasibility of a kill switch, what an “AI pause” would actually buy us, and whether we’d ever agree that AI is capable enough.
Melanie Plaza (Chief Technology Officer, AE Studio)
Dina Hussein (OpenAI)
Moderated by Tori Elliott, Senior Reporter, WIRED
Panel: Trust as Strategy and the Fight Against AI-Enabled Fraud
This panel looks at how companies are treating trust as a core part of their strategy rather than an afterthought, and what it will take across industries to stay ahead of the people using AI to deceive.
Anya Schiffrin (Co-director, Technology Policy and Innovation, Columbia University (SIPA))
Clement Wolf (Director, Responsible AI Strategy, Google)
Additional speaker TBA
Moderated by Sandra Khalil, Associate Director, All Tech Is Human
Keynote by J. Trevor Hughes (President and CEO, IAPP)
Lightning Talk by Joshua Elder, Senior VP and Head of Grantmaking, Siegel Family Endowment
Panel: Rebuilding the Commons: Community and Pluralism in the AI Era'
This panel looks at efforts to create digital spaces where people with different views can actually have a conversation, and asks what role AI might play in strengthening, rather than eroding, the shared life of a community.
Carrie Varoquiers (Chief Impact Officer, Workday Foundation)
Eli Pariser (Co-Director, New_ Public)
Alison Lee (Chief R&D Officer, The Rithm Project)
Moderated by Kristin Hansen (Executive Director, Civic Health Project)
Fireside Chat: Looking Back to Look Ahead: Co-Designing AI After a Decade of Tech Lessons
To close the day, Beth Goldberg of Humanity AI and Sinead Bovell of WAYE reflect on what we've heard and where we go from here. A decade ago, social media promised connection and delivered a mix of benefits and harms that we're still sorting out. AI gives us a second chance to get it right. This conversation asks what we learned the first time around, how AI is changing our sense of control over our own lives, and how people across sectors can work together to shape the tools and standards that will define this technology.
Beth Goldberg (Executive Director, Humanity AI)
Moderated by Sinead Bovell (Founder, WAYE)
Closing remarks by ATIH’s David Ryan Polgar.
Our Attendees
2025 audience breakdown by sector.
Our Responsible Tech Summit 2026 attendees will include:
Global Responsible Tech Research & Thought Leadership
Major Civil Society & Digital Rights Organizations
Responsible AI and Trust & Safety Practitioners
Philanthropy Driving the Responsible Tech Ecosystem
Movement Leadership
Sponsors for the 2026 Summit
Interested in sponsoring our summit? Email us hello@alltechishuman.org
Strategic Partners for the 2026 Summit
Our strategic partners for the Responsible Tech Summit are Columbia World Projects, Forum One, and Highspring. Columbia World Projects mobilizes the university’s researchers and scholars to work with governments, organizations, businesses and communities to tackle global challenges. Forum One amplifies the impact of mission-driven organizations through transformational digital solutions. Highspring is a leading global professional services organization with three integrated offerings: Consulting, Managed Services, and Talent Solutions.
Interested in becoming a strategic partner for the summit? Email us hello@alltechishuman.org
About All Tech Is Human
All Tech Is Human takes a whole-of-ecosystem approach in tackling thorny tech & society issues, and helps strengthen the global Responsible Tech movement. Together, we co-create a better tech future that is aligned with the public interest. Our holistic approach is centered on multistakeholder community-building, creating valuable educational resources, and professionalizing Responsible Tech through our career-related activities. See all of our projects here.
Continued Learning & Resources from All Tech Is Human
Join our Slack community of 15k members across 117 countries
Read our Responsible Tech Guide
Take our Responsible AI certificate through LinkedIn Learning
Read our latest report, How to Tackle AI Companions
Read our Responsible AI Impact Report
Participate in our new working group on nudification apps
Enter our working group pool for Responsible AI projects
Utilize our Responsible Tech Job Board