AI & Society: AI in the Age of Surveillance.

We will be talking about AI and in the age of Surveillance.

The Run down
Introductions:
10 mins –
Introduce yourself with the formal pleasantries of who are you and what do you do.

News:
10 Mins –
What’s going on in the world today as related to AI and its effect on society
Quick word on: The possibility of creating a Kaggle team for competition.

Community talk on AI and the Age of Surveillance:
60 mins –
From the ethical:
What conversations should Americans and the world be having about the status of our privacy?

What are the ethics of AI surveillance?

Is it ethical to conduct studies that can see if people are gay or not? How about in a world where in some countries its illegal to be gay(and have horrible due process or a ineffective judicial system)?

Whats are the ethics of AI research? Should IRBs (Institutional Review Boards) have to take a double take at their polices around this?

What are the ethics of encryption for all? Should everyone have encryption?

Should democracies fund more projects to protect anonymity?

Should there be more non profits that create software that protects privacy

To the legal:
What laws should be put into place to prevent unconstitutional search and seizure in the age of AI surveillance?

What there the line of privacy, has it shifted, in today's age?

Should ISPs be able to collect our data without our consent? s it even constitutional? What's the alternative, not have an ISP or be forced to buy a VPN?

Should ISPs keep logs of all their users and searches?

Should Experian be liable for the breach that lead to the theft of 100+ million social security numbers? This is just another in a long line of breaches (Target, The US government's Office of Personnel Management hack, and more).

Data allows machine learning models to get better all the time. However it comes at a cost, first to our privacy and second to possible economic and political power (since speech is now tied to money in America). We as members of our society can opt for more efficiency and better services (by giving up more data) or more economic compensation (by charging a price). Is there a middle ground? Should there be a structure that allows us to have a choice?

To the economic:
We pay for free services with our privacy and data. Can there be an alternative model that allows people greater control of their personal data and can pay them for the data they generate?

If the internet were to re-decentralize will the data that feeds (and improves) the machine learning models of companies like say Google slow the pace of innovation, or will they have to start to compensate people via the block chain?

Can encryption tilt the economic calculus towards greater liberty by raising the costs of acquiring data from individuals so that intelligence agencies have to be more frugal with their efforts and only target serious actors (versus everyone and everything)

To the technical:
Are VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) really secure? There is still an element of trust that is necessary since we cannot know truly if they retain logs.

Can a open source VPN on the blockchain which incentivizes people economically (and even politically) be an alternative in a world where privacy is shrinking?

Can the advances in machine learning with its massive troves of data continue in a decentralized internet?

Can technologies like Ethereum, IPFS, and web3.js help create a new alternative system that gives control back to the users?

Can we use these technologies to craft a new internet economy where we can counter act the concentration of information (without consent or no alternatives), wealth, or power (see Zuckerberg thinking about running for president)?

Please join us for this thought provoking discussion.

Networking:
20+ mins –
Schmooze it up you guys. Exchange business cards, ideas, or jokes.