Keynote Speakers

Investigating Targeted Espionage: Methods, Findings, Implications

The Citizen Lab has been undertaking investigations into targeted espionage for well over a decade. This path-breaking research has uncovered widespread global harms and an alarming spread of authoritarian practices across borders connected to a burgeoning and widely abused commercial surveillance industry. In his keynote, Deibert explains the methods, findings and implications of the Citizen Lab's research for human rights and global security.

This Keynote will take place on Thursday, October 28th from 11am - 12pm EDT.

At The End of The World, Plant a Tree

If the hellish events of 2020-2021 have left you feeling like the first stirrings of apocalypse are at long last come upon us, you clearly aren't alone. But just what do we do with ourselves, here at the end of all things? What happens to us — psychically, emotionally, socially, politically — when we accept and internalize that events capable of ending human civilization as we've known it have already taken place, and that all we're doing now is waiting for them to unfold in their fullest consequence?

We'll be touring some of the most common responses to this understanding — including the turn toward reactionary blood-and-soil nativism, the false comfort of left accelerationism, and the newly hegemonic rhetoric of "resilience" — before exploring what qualities might actually serve us best, as individuals and collectivities, as the epoch on which we've predicated our entire sense of being draws to its inevitable close.

By developing the notion that there are capacities to which we have permanent recourse, no matter what else happens, this conversation will hopefully leave you feeling able to face the gathering darkness with grace and equanimity. And, hey, if the apocalypse fails to arrive on time, at least you'll have a bunch of clever new things to say at parties.

This Keynote will take place on Saturday, October 30th from 11am - 12pm EDT.

Top of Mind Ethics (TOME)

Top of Mind Ethics is a heuristic that helps engineers, designers, product managers — anyone involved in the solution process — integrate ethics into their workflows.

This Keynote will take place on Thursday, October 28th from 5pm - 6pm EDT.

Big Data and Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare: Ethical and Social Implications of Neonatology

High-speed physiological data are proving to be one of the most untapped resources in healthcare today. Many medical devices produce data streams at frequencies of a reading a second or faster making the effective use of that data a Big Data challenge. A growing body of research studies are demonstrating common physiological patterns for a range of medical conditions at earlier stages in the condition progression paving the way for new artificial intelligence and machine learning based approaches that could also be more reliable. There is great potential for real-time assessment of this physiological data to improve patient outcomes and to do so on an individualized personalized level. Systemic use of  Big Data and AI in Healthcare present many ethics and social implications

This keynote will demonstrate how Big Data and AI can be used systemically for new approaches in research and clinical care for differential diagnosis and condition management. Ethical and social implications will be considered within the context of the application of these approaches in neonatology.

Safiya Noble is an Associate Professor at UCLA, where she acts as Co-Founder and Co-Director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry. Noble works within African American Studies and Gender Studies, and works with the University of Oxford on the Oxford Commission on AI & Good Governance. Noble is on the boards of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative and the NYU Center Critical Race and Digital Studies where she works to serve people vulnerable to online harassment. She is the author of the book Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism and is frequently cited by news outlets such as the BBC and CNN for her expertise in algorithmic discrimination and technology bias. Noble has received various awards including the Distinguished Alumna Award from the iSchool Alumni Association, and was also on the ‘Top 25 Doers, Dreamers, and Drivers of 2019’ by Government Technology magazine.  

Noble's keynote will be addressing the AI/Automation and Ethical and the Human Values ISTAS21 sub-themes and take place on Friday, October 29th from 5pm - 6pm EDT.

The Digital Basanos: AI and the Virtue and Violence of Truth-Telling

In ancient Greece, the basanos or touchstone had multiple meanings: a literal stone that tests the authenticity of gold by revealing its characteristic mark upon striking it, or metaphorically, a moral test of the authenticity of a life or a ruler. It also referred to a method of extracting truthful testimony by means of torture; specifically, of non-Greek slaves. The basanos thus embodies the interweaving of truth-telling with virtue, violence, and power in Western moral, political, and technical thought. In this talk I explore how contemporary uses of AI and data science have retraced and reconstituted the basanos in myriad ways, while also revealing a critical opportunity for the invention of new, more just and more sustainable means of truth-telling.

This Keynote will take place on Friday, October 29th from 11am - 12pm EDT.