RightsCon Toronto 2018

The policy debates about Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been predominantly
dominated by organizations and actors in the Global North. There is a
growing need for a more diverse perspective regarding the policy
issues and consequences of AI. The developing world will be directly
affected by the deployment of AI technologies and services. However,
there is a lack of informed perspectives to participate in the policy
debates.

This roundtable is a follow up to the international event “Artificial
Intelligence and Inclusion” held in Rio de Janeiro earlier this year
in partnership between ITS Rio and the Berkman Klein Center for
Internet & Society and a roundtable on the Internet Governance Forum
(IGF 2017). The discussion will be focused on development of
Artificial Intelligence and its impact on inclusion in different areas
such as health and wellbeing, education, low-resource communities,
public safety, employment, among others. The goal of this roundtable
is to bring the debates of this international event to the RightsCon
community, enlarging the conversation and deepening the understanding
of AI inclusion challenges, governance and opportunities, to identify
and discuss areas for research, education and action.

We want to identify, map, understand, and address the manifold issues
around AI and Inclusion, from an interdisciplinary perspective, with a
particular focus on two (often interrelated, but analytically
distinct) dimensions of inclusion: First, the complex set of issues
concerning the geographic divide between the Global North and the
Global South when it comes to the development, design, and governance
of AI-based technologies. Second, the uneven impact of AI and related
technologies on often marginalized communities, including youth,
people in rural areas on with low socio-economic status, LGBTQ, ethnic
and racial minorities, people with disabilities, girls and women,
among others. Also, this roundtable will tackle the moral and ethical
issues arising from these technologies. We shall discuss how to make
AI behave in a way that is beneficial to people beyond reaching
functional and inclusive goals and addressing technical problems. This
will allow for an elevated level of trust between humans and our
technology that is needed for a fruitful pervasive use of AI in our
daily lives.