RightsCon Toronto 2018

Prioritizing Human Well-Being for Economics and AI (The IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems)

Speakers: John C. Havens

The GDP was galvanized in the 1940's when the world lay in ruins after the second world war where a global focus on exponential growth made sense. But as Bobby Kennedy pointed out in his famous, "Beyond GDP" speech this global metric wasn't built to measure things like the environment or mental health.

Inspired by Kennedy's speech, Bhutan created its Gross National Happiness Index to launch the world's first Well-being Indicator. Evolving over the past thirty years, measures along these lines now include The OECD's Better Life Index, The Social Progress Index, and the Genuine Progress Indicator. These "Beyond GDP" metrics can provide a triple bottom line mentality for technology policy that include measurements beyond economic productivity and growth.

We need metrics valuing human aspects of agency, emotion and identity along with environmental factors to foster genuine societal flourishing. When creating Artificial Intelligence designed to replicate tasks and augment our capabilities, we need to avoid equating exponential growth with holistic prosperity by prioritizing human well-being in the age of the algorithm.

Teaching AI to Explain Itself (Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University)

Speakers: Suchana Seth

A growing body of artificial intelligence algorithms are NOT black-box - they can explain their decision mechanisms. What do "good" explanations look like in the world of accountable algorithms - from the perspective of users, consumers, and regulators of AI? How do we set realistic expectations about explainable or interpretable machine learning algorithms?

The Human in Artificial Intelligence (Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC))

Speakers: David Fewer

The session will detail CIPPIC's work and interest in AI and human rights. CIPPIC’s approach to the emergence of AI focuses on the implications of the technology for human rights. To date, this discussion has tended to focus on transparency and accountability of decisions made by AI that violate privacy rights or equality rights by entertaining discriminatory factors such as race. But human rights are broad, encompassing a vast range of human experiences. Innovation in AI will ensure that this technology will intersect with humans in unforeseen and unexpected ways. In this lightning talk, we will explore some of the less obvious ways that AI will intersect with human rights.

Rise of the Empathic Machines: Technology that Knows how you Feel (Sensum)

Speakers: Gawain Morrison

A quick tour of the current state of tech that measures human emotions, behaviour and physiology, and how it is being trained to respond to us. Understand what is possible to measure with existing tech and what is coming down the line soon. Hear about some of the key considerations for the age of empathic tech, such as privacy, digital sovereignty and the impact on global society.