Tech & Democracy: A Better Tech Future Summit

📅 Held on 18 April 2023
📍The Shard, 68th floor
🕐 5:30 to 9pm

Event Description:
250 individuals across civil society, government, industry, and academia will come together in London to tackle wicked tech & society issues. The upcoming summit is focused around uniting stakeholders, promoting knowledge-sharing & collaboration, and understanding values and trade-offs to co-create a tech future aligned with the public interest. This gathering will coincide with the release of All Tech Is Human’s Tech & Democracy report, and also build upon learning from our earlier summit in NYC.

TWO PANELS | SHORT ORG PRESENTATIONS | MIXER | KNOWLEDGE-SHARING

Some of the orgs and companies that were in attendance include Ada Lovelace Institute, Alan Turing Institute, Atlantic Council, Center for AI and Digital Policy, DCMS, Deloitte, Demos, EY, LEGO, Meta, Milltown Partners, OfCom, Oversight Board, Oxford Internet Institute, Royal Society, Salesforce, Social Finance, Tech Against Terrorism, Tony Blair Institute, Twitch, UK Safer Internet Centre, Yoti, and many more. 

Tech & Democracy: A Better Tech Future Summit was organized by All Tech Is Human, in collaboration + support by Crisp, a Kroll Business. All Tech Is Human is a non-profit committed to strengthening the Responsible Tech ecosystem so we can tackle wicked tech & society issues and co-create a tech future aligned with the public interest.

Dr. Murtaza Shaikh is a Principal – Illegal Harms, Hate & Terrorism on the Online Safety Policy Team at Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator. Ofcom currently regulates online video sharing platforms established in the UK. Following the passage of the Online Safety Bill, Ofcom will have broader powers to require in-scope services to minimise the presence and spread of illegal content online.

He was previously Senior Advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, where he drafted the ‘Effective Guidelines on Hate Speech, Social Media and Minorities’. He was also Co-Director of Averroes, a think tank focusing on religious hatred, counter-extremism and integration. His expert insights have been relied on by the late Jo Cox MP, Home Affairs Committee, Government Departments, Law Commission and international human rights mechanisms at the UN and Council of Europe. He also advised the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation on conflict prevention and incitement to religious hatred as well litigating cases at international and regional human rights mechanisms.

He holds a PhD from SOAS on the ‘Protection of Religious Minorities under International Law and Islamic Law’ and an LLM from Essex University in International Human Rights Law.

Abigail Bridgman is a Ugandan-born human rights lawyer who has headed up the Case Development division of the Oversight Board’s Content team for more than two years, playing an instrumental role in developing and driving the case process. Before that, she worked at Meta on the team that created the Oversight Board. Her passion for the intersection of international human rights law and the criminal justice system includes practicing at the International Criminal Court in the Hague and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, focusing on atrocity prevention and transitional justice.

She holds a master’s degree in international crime and justice and a degree in Law from Makerere University and is admitted to practice law in California.

David Hunter is the VP of Product for Crisp's Platform Trust & Safety products. With over a decade of prior experience in technology consulting, David has held various positions within Crisp since 2015 across major projects, innovation and commercial delivery.

Today he is responsible for the strategy, growth and delivery of the products that Crisp provides to the world's leading social media, gaming and kids platforms - keeping them safe from the broadest and growing range of harmful content and behaviour. He regularly holds speaking engagements on subjects including online harms, OSINT/SOCINT and bad actor tradecraft and the future of online harm mitigation.

Julie Dawson
Julie leads regulatory and government relations for Yoti’s digital identity platform; developing policy approaches for fraud prevention and safeguarding, liaising with national and sectoral trust frameworks, in conjunction with Yoti's internal and external ethics boards. Julie is an authority in digital identity policy, ethics and governance, she represents Yoti at numerous fora including the World Economic Forum Global Coalition for  Digital Safety and Digital Identity Innovators; WeProtect Global Alliance, techUK Public Sector and Digital Identity Boards, the Sprite + Network - Security, Privacy, Identity, and Trust Engagement Network, IEEE SA Children’s Advisory Group, OSTIA Online Safety Tech Industry Association and the UK Digital Identity & Attributes Oversight Board, from the Department of Science, Innovation & Technology.

Renée Cummings
Professor Renée Cummings is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) ethicist and the first Data Activist in Residence, at the School of Data Science, at the University of Virginia (UVA) where she was named Professor of Practice in Data Science. She is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a distinguished member of the World Economic Forum’s Data Equity Council. She is also a criminologist, criminal psychologist, therapeutic jurisprudence specialist and a Community Scholar at Columbia University. She also serves as co-director of the Public Interest Technology (PIT) University Network, at UVA, and is on the board of advisors of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.

Committed to stretching the imagination of data science, reimagining the relationship between data and society, and redefining the data power structure, Renée works at the intersection of technology, power, and society.

John-Orr Hanna
John-Orr has worked across UK National and International Policy particularly in Child Safety and most recently in Mis/Dis Information. Both as part of the EU Disinformation Code of Conduct drafting team, but also sitting on the subsequent EU Disinformation Crisis Response Team. Co-chairs a key component of  World Economic Forum : Global Coalition for Digital Safety

Some of the orgs and companies in attendance include Ada Lovelace Institute, Alan Turing Institute, Center for AI and Digital Policy, DCMS, Deloitte, Demos, Meta, Milltown Partners, OfCom, Oversight Board, Oxford Internet Institute, Tech Against Terrorism, Tony Blair Institute, Twitch, UK Safer Internet Centre.

All Tech Is Human has been building an expanded and more cohesive ecosystem since our founding in 2018 through a wide variety of activities around three key areas: multistakeholder convening & community-building, multidisciplinary education, and diversifying the traditional tech pipeline with more backgrounds, disciplines, and lived experiences. This allows us to transition from the current awareness stage (awareness of a problem, understanding root causes) to the harder solution stage. We have developed a unique “grassroots-power model” that rapidly distributes ideas & power across an interconnected hub while moving at the speed of tech.

Some of our activities include in-person summits & mixers, open working groups that develop reports, a global Slack community of over 5k, Responsible Tech Job Board, a mentorship program, Tech Stewardship Practice Program, university ambassadors program, livestreams, and our Responsible Tech Guide. Recent reports include Co-Creating a Better Tech Future and AI & Human Rights. You can find all of our projects & links here, along with the 400+ individuals we have featured at our gatherings and in our reports here.

Have a question? Email us [hello / AllTechIsHuman.org]