Feminist AI: Shaping Ethical Futures
We explore the intersections of artificial intelligence, ethics, and feminist approaches to technology in a dialogue about the future of AI through a feminist lens. It is a conversation for all genders about less dominant alternatives, bridging binary oppositions, and embracing pluralism and differences in the design and development of AI.
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Programme
13.30 – 14.00 – Arrival and Check-in
14.00 – 14.10 – Welcome & Introduction
14.10 – 15.00 – Keynotes by:
Eleanor Drage, Senior Research Fellow, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, University of Cambridge
- Can the EU AI Act be Feminist?
In this talk, Eleanor introduces HEAT, a somewhat anarchic regulation tool that takes a feminist approach to helping companies meet the EU AI Act’s obligations. She explains why feminism brings the AI Act to life, addresses its shortcomings, and makes the Act meaningful and interesting for technologists. We explore why addressing ‘bias’ isn’t enough, ‘diversity in tech teams’ needs to be properly defined and explained, and there’s no such thing as an AI ethics expert.
Abigail Oppong, Independent Researcher, Ghana
- An Invisible Lens on AI: Developing Inclusive Technologies for Diverse Communities
Addressing gender bias in AI systems, particularly for low-resourced African languages and the continent’s rich cultural diversity, tends to be a challenge. In this talk, I will explore how using methods like informal sessions, participant observation, digital content analysis, and AI model character analysis could help mitigate these biases. The insight gained from this research extends to assessing the current landscape of AI Technologies for marginalized communities in sectors such as health. Emphasizing a more feminist and community-centered approach, this talk will highlight the importance of designing technologies that truly serve local needs, gearing more into case studies that reveal the power dynamics influencing AI development across various stakeholders in the low-resourced settings and pointing out the ethical implications for sustainable impact.
15.00 – 15.15 – Break and refreshments
15.15 – 16.00 – Keynotes by:
Laura Forlano, Professor, College of Art, Media and Design (CAMD), Northeastern University
- In this keynote talk, Laura Forlano will draw on her new book, Cyborg (MIT Press), co-authored with Danya Glabau in order to examine the question of whether 21st century technologies—from smartphones to medical devices to the commonplace use of artificial intelligence—have made cyborgs of us all? The book takes feminist cyborg theory as their starting point to explore the myriad ways that technology traverses our daily lives and practices and to ask: how do social and cultural factors—from gender to race, class to ability—affect how technologies are imagined, developed, put to use, and, crucially, resisted? Forlano and Glabau present an approach called “critical cyborg literacy” that brings together insights from critical feminist, race, and disability thinkers in an effort to reframe popular and scholarly conversations around the affordances of cyborg theory and to reimagine the cyborg in light of emerging technologies like automation and AI.
Joana Varon, Founder Executive Directress, Coding Rights; Tech and Human Rights Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School
16.00 – 16.15 – Break and refreshments
16.15 – 17.00 – Panel discussion + Q&A with audience
Panel Moderator: Sally Wyatt, Professor of Digital Cultures, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University
17.00 – 18.00 – Closing remarks, followed by drinks and networking
Lesgevers / sprekers
Eleanor is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, and Co-Director of the AI: Narratives and Justice Programme. She is PI on the HEAT project, an AI ethics and regulation project that helps companies respond to the EU AI act. She also uses feminist and anti-racist ideas to improve society’s understanding of AI. She is the co-host of the award-winning The Good Robot Podcast, where she interviews top scholars and technologists about AI ethics. She has also worked with Google DeepMind, The Financial Times, The United Nations Data Science & Ethics Groups, CNN, BNP Paribas, The Open Data Institute (ODI), and the Institute of Science & Technology. She’s co-editor of The Good Robot: Feminist Voices on the Future of Technology (Feb 2024), and Feminist AI: Critical Perspectives on Algorithms, Data and Intelligent Machines (Oct 2023).
Abigail Oppong is a renowned advocate for AI ethics, focusing on addressing biases in NLP and health systems and enhancing fairness in AI technologies, especially for underserved communities. Named among the 100 Women in AI Ethics in 2023, she collaborates with academia, industry, and NGOs to develop responsible AI systems tailored to local needs. Abigail’s expertise in data science and machine learning underpins her efforts to shape ethical AI governance, particularly in Africa. Her interdisciplinary approach and previous experience in the nonprofit sector enrich her contributions to AI ethics, emphasizing the importance of localization, trust, culture, and representation in technological development. Her passion for community development influenced her research journey to investigate how local organizations can be empowered in the age of emerging technologies.
Laura Forlano, a Fulbright award-winning and National Science Foundation funded scholar, is a disabled writer, social scientist and design researcher. She is Professor in the departments of Art + Design and Communication Studies in the College of Arts, Media, and Design and Senior Fellow at The Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University. She is the author of Cyborg (with Danya Glabau, MIT Press 2024) and an editor of three books: Bauhaus Futures (MIT Press 2019), digitalSTS (Princeton University Press 2019) and From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen (MIT Press 2011). She received her Ph.D. in communications from Columbia University.
Joana Varon is the Executive Directress and Creative Chaos Catalyst at Coding Rights and a researcher affiliated to the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Alumni at Mozilla Foundation and at the German Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (IFA). Using creativity, hacker knowledge to disseminate feminist and decolonial approaches to technologies, she is co-creator of several projects operating in the interplay between activism, arts and technologies, such as Tech Cartographies, The Compost Engineers, Oracle for Transfeminist Tech, Musea Mami, Chupadados – the data sucker, Safer Nudes, among others.