Date

7th March 2019, 17:30 to 18:45

Institute

Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

Type

Seminar

Venue

Conference Room, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, 17 Russell Square, London WC1B 5DR

 

Description

Our daily interactions with AI-driven technologies – whether seen or unseen – are becoming increasingly normalised. The use of AI virtual personal assistants (VPAs) in the home are one such feature. Yet, while recent policy documents on AI are quick to note the potential ethical impact of such technologies, little thorough critique has examined how these technologies work to create and reproduce asymmetries of power that fall across, in particular, lines of gender.

The female characterisation of Siri (Apple), Alexa (Amazon), and Cortana (Microsoft) – AI domestic assistants designed to make home life more efficient; the unprecedented walk-out in protest of Google’s treatment of women in November 2018; and the biases toward women ingrained in Amazon’s AI-driven recruitment system, all point to the critical need to undertake this kind of inquiry and to critical consider how the development and use of AI technologies intersect with issues of gender.

In response, the ILPC will be hosting an evening seminar on the 7th March to discuss these and other issues relating to the intersection of women, AI and the law. We seek to canvass issues including biases in algorithmic processing; the invisibility of women’s labour in the production and even design of technology; representation of women in ICTs; and the gendered design of AI technologies, such as VPAs.

 

Panellists:

Dr Nina Power, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Roehampton

Dr Sarah Dillon, Director of AI: Narratives and Justice, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence

Dr Reuben Binns, Lecturer, Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, Research Fellow, Information Commissioner’s Office

Dr Jedrzej Niklas, Postdoctoral Researcher, School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds.

 

Discussant: Dr Rachel Adams, Early Career Researcher, Information Law and Policy Centre, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

Chair: Dr Nóra Ni Loideain, Director and Lecturer in Law, Information Law and Policy Centre, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

 

The seminar will be followed by a wine reception.

Registration to the event is available here.