What are we learning from our University Ambassadors?

Yesterday, All Tech Is Human hosted a Responsible Technology University Summit, full of the incredible insights and energy that I’ve come to expect from this enthusiastic community! I’m grateful for all that the speakers and panelists shared and was happy to have been a part of it and share some of our work at All Tech Is Human, especially the important takeaways that we’re learning from our fledgling University Ambassadors program as well as some thoughts on where we’re taking the program from here.

Since I joined All Tech Is Human as Program Director in late summer, I’ve had the pleasure of heading up a few initiatives – of course the Responsible Technology Job Board, which I’ve been curating since September of 2020, which features roles that are focused on reducing the harms of technology, diversifying the tech pipeline, and ensuring that technology is aligned with the public interest – but also the opportunity to run our Mentorship Pilot Program, which has been underway this fall, and to prepare for our first full-scale Mentorship program, which we’re kicking off in Mid-January of 2022. 

I also have the pleasure of leading out University Ambassadors program, which came from a casual idea that David Polgar floated to see who within our large community wanted a leadership role as a liaison or point person for the Responsible Technology movement on their own campus. It started with a social media call-out for interest, and the enthusiasm has been fantastic from the beginning – we now have representatives from over 50 universities worldwide. 

This began as a way to bring new voices into the space and simply compare notes, but as Ambassadors have shared their experiences and perspectives, it’s become clear that there is a real need for building community and uniting voices within university settings, across campuses of course, but also connecting the various voices within universities across disciplines. 

We’ve learned so much from these students already! One point of commonality that we’ve heard many times is that students feel siloed in their discrete areas of study. They know other people are doing similar work, even on their own campuses, but struggle to find ways to collaborate and build upon the work that everyone is doing. They want to know which professors are allied in these efforts; they want to know which alumni have insights and experiences to share. 

There are so many academic initiatives being undertaken at this point with many interested students and engaged faculty, in addition to a growing number of degree programs that are multidisciplinary, as well as a growing number of research institutes based in Universities studying these very issues; yet, it can feel like they’re all isolated individuals. A phrase that’s come up repeatedly is that students feel as though they’re “fumbling in the dark” and connecting dots haphazardly to find one another, but these connections are being forged one at a time. We hope to facilitate connections more methodically instead, from the ground up, starting with the students and mapping areas of interest, potential collaborators and resources within academia.

Because the university segment of the Responsible Tech ecosystem is not a monolith, and because the field is so multidisciplinary, it’s not at all unusual for various faculty members within the same university to have no relationship with one another (or to possibly not even know that the other exists). Maybe one is in the law school, another is in the iSchool, someone else is doing computer science, another is in the school of business, yet another is doing Science, Tech, & Society, while another one’s in the digital humanities department. Just because they’re under the umbrella of Responsible Tech or Public Interest Technology, all trying to solve the same basic problems, doesn’t mean they’ll ever compare notes, even at the same university. That’s one important reason that we are working to connect people through the University Ambassadors program, developing point persons among the student bodies to start forging connections and community from the grassroots, because there are excellent organizations working to bridge these entities from the tops of institutions, and we’re seeing a need to try to meet that challenge from the other side as well. 

We heard from a few of our University Ambassadors at the University Summit:

• Allison Macey Banzon, The University of Central Florida (PhD in Education within the learning sciences track)

• Jasmine Zhang, University of Toronto (BASc in Engineering Science (Major in Machine Intelligence)

• Kaylyn Matis, George Mason University (Conflict Analysis & Resolution) and interning with The Counterterrorism Group 

• Nayun Eom, Tufts University (BA in Sociology & Economics) / also the Co-founder of The Lantern Think Tank

• Chloe Jensen, Yale University (B.A. English Language and Literature)

• Joanne Kim, studying Public Policy on a prelaw track at Duke University, and Co-lead of Ethical Tech, a student-led club on campus

These Ambassadors are studying many disciplines, which is representative of the field at large -- computer science, data science, psychology, sociology, political science, communications, english, UX Design, Science Tech & Society; there are MBAs and MPP’s and JDs; there are students pursuing Masters degrees in Human Rights and Technology (Columbia), in Responsibility in Science, Engineering and Technology (Technical U of Munich), in Global Affairs, specializing in Responsible Innovation and Tech Policy (Toronto).

You can find each of these Ambassadors profiled on our website. 

I want to highlight a few of their reasons for getting involved in the program: 

Monica Tsang at University of Waterloo says:

I hope to gather AI ethics resources for fellow students to discuss as “food for thought” and make ethics an open dialogue, not strict directives from leadership. Currently, there are modules of AI Ethics at school that are prescriptive to students...Many students want to explore ethics, but current processes are bureaucratic and discouraging. I hope to gather resources for students at my school to make AI Ethics an open-ended interesting conversation.

Another student, Poe Han Thar Kyaw at University of Toronto shares: 

In 2018, Facebook was implicated by UN Human Rights Investigators for enabling the Rohingya Genocide. As a Burmese national, I believe precautions should be taken and assessments should have been done before entering countries with a strong history of conflict because technology can cause irreparable damage. As a result, I hope to contribute my policy experience and knowledge to create responsible and ethical products that are aligned with society’s goals.

And finally, Daniel Torquato Fortes from University College London explains: 

In Brazil, I used to work as a digital transformation strategist for Petrobras, our national Oil & Gas company. As a digital professional, I started to realize that there's a myth regarding our technological future: there will be wealth, abundance and prosperity. But we are not really moving this way...so I decided to study Foresight to think critically about the long-term futures and allow us to make better decisions today when it comes to digital technologies. This is completely intertwined with the Responsible Tech community, which has been a joy to discover and join.

We’ve heard from students about some of their pain points as well. One insight is that “the biggest challenge in getting involved is just taking the first step and overcoming the paralysis that results from feeling overwhelmed.” 

Another is that “a more succinct and digestible handbook on how to get involved with these initiatives (and learn more about them) will help the most.” 

These insights show that even though we at All Tech Is Human have created the Responsible Tech Guide, there’s a need for greater and more granular ecosystem mapping specifically within the university setting -- the universities involved, faculty, students, student-run clubs, research institutes, and the relevant degree programs. 

Another insight around pain points points to “lack of formal education & training programs,” which suggests a need to map out those formal training programs that do exist, because the list grows all the time and students need a resource for understanding their available options, which are growing every semester.

Another common pain point: “Finding a responsible tech internship program at a major company is rare if not impossible.” It’s my job to find those roles! So I know that it’s true that there are far fewer internships at big tech companies than there are qualified and eager students to fill those roles. I struggle to find enough entry level roles and internships within the tech industry for the large number of interested candidates. While there are a rapidly growing number of entry level opportunities, supply and demand aren’t yet equal. Industry still primarily wants senior talent, but the field only grows if entry level talent can get in and get the requisite experience to take on the senior roles. 

I encourage everyone to apply for those existing roles, because you might land one! But I do recommend a few other options to gain early career experience in responsible tech. One important option is to get that early Responsible Tech experience outside of a major tech company by looking toward responsible tech start-ups. Look to NGO’s! And very importantly, look to the public sector. There is a huge need for Civic-minded Technologists working within government, and this part of the field has a lot of institutional support and is growing even more rapidly than industry. Finally, I recommend looking to traditional industry jobs to gain some experience before pivoting to a more explicit responsible tech role. 

Moving forward, now that we’ve gotten a sense of students’ most pressing needs, the University Ambassadors’ first major project will be to create a resource for greater ecosystem mapping within the University setting -- who are these leaders and point persons within our University Ambassadors program? What are their student run clubs? What are the relevant degree programs and areas of study at each university represented in the program as well as across the entire university ecosystem? Who are the faculty teaching and researching, and what research projects are they undertaking? 

We envision future initiatives that create community around shared experiences like meetups, workshops, hackathons, and even guest speaking on one another’s campuses. There are other potential plans in the works as the program develops, as well.

For now, our primary focus has been to facilitate the infrastructure for student-led community with a web of point persons and contacts across universities, to initiate conversations cross-collaboratively within universities, and to create a resource that sheds light on the complexities of the entire Responsible Tech University ecosystem. 

We’re really proud of the University Ambassadors that make up our program and are excited about big things to come!

If you’d like to participate, please fill out the interest form and join us in 2022.