Ethics in Translation: A.I. Ethics Across Borders

The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence is often framed in universal terms, yet such framings obscure how cultural and material practices shape fundamentally different relationships with data. In many parts of the Global South, communities interact with A.I. not only as users but also as repairers, annotators, and mediators of fragile infrastructures, producing forms of engagement that Western discourses on A.I. ethics frequently miss. Based on my long-term ethnographic and design work across Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Canada, and other contexts, I will show how AI systems extend colonial legacies by imposing Western neoliberal values, how epistemic injustices emerge when local ways of knowing are rendered unintelligible, and how community practices such as informal data repair in Dhaka or immigrant struggles over data legitimacy in Canada reveal alternative ethical concerns. I will also highlight the growing data annotation industries in countries such as Bangladesh, India, and China, where labeling labor is promoted as a path to development but raises distinct worries around exploitation, recognition, and long-term sustainability.

These accounts demonstrate that A.I. ethics cannot be disentangled from situated practices of data and labor, and that any attempt to globalize A.I. ethics must bring these lived realities to the fore in order to avoid reproducing the very exclusions it claims to resist.

Ishtiaque Ahmed
https://discover.research.utoronto.ca/18628-syed-ishtiaque-ahmed/about
Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science
University of Toronto

About the Speaker:

I am an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. My current research is focused on the Ethics in AI. I am particularly interested in building responsible AI technologies with the voices of underprivileged communities. My research questions the ethical foundations of AI systems and explores novel ways of community-based participatory development of AI. I draw heavily on political philosophy, critical theory, social science, anthropology, and STS literature in my work. I design, develop, deploy, and evaluate technologies that connect theories from these disciplines to mobile and ubiquitous computing, natural language processing, social media, and machine learning. My research involves both theoretical depth and technical challenges.

I direct the Third Space research group at the DGP Lab. I am also an affiliated faculty at the UofT iSchool, School of Environment, School of Cities, and Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. I co-organize the monthly UofT Critical Computing Seminar that hosts speakers analyzing computer science and its applications from the perspectives of marginalization, bias, and oppression. I co-direct the PRISM program at the CS Department, which trains students from marginalized communities for higher education in computer science. I teach "Computers and Society" and "Ethical Aspects of AI" at the Computer Science Department of UofT. My work is usually published in CHI, CSCW, FaccT, ICTD, DIS, and COMPASS.
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This is a talk with audience Q&A presented by the University of Toronto's Centre for Ethics that is free to attend and open to the public. Free refreshments will be provided at the event. The talk will also be streamed online with live chat here [to be posted].

About the Centre for Ethics (http://ethics.utoronto.ca):

The Centre for Ethics is an interdisciplinary centre aimed at advancing research and teaching in the field of ethics, broadly defined. The Centre seeks to bring together the theoretical and practical knowledge of diverse scholars, students, public servants and social leaders in order to increase understanding of the ethical dimensions of individual, social, and political life.

In pursuit of its interdisciplinary mission, the Centre fosters lines of inquiry such as (1) foundations of ethics, which encompasses the history of ethics and core concepts in the philosophical study of ethics; (2) ethics in action, which relates theory to practice in key domains of social life, including bioethics, business ethics, and ethics in the public sphere; and (3) ethics in translation, which draws upon the rich multiculturalism of the City of Toronto and addresses the ethics of multicultural societies, ethical discourse across religious and cultural boundaries, and the ethics of international society.

The Ethics of A.I. Lab at the Centre For Ethics recently appeared on a list of 10 organizations leading the way in ethical A.I.: https://ocean.sagepub.com/blog/10-organizations-leading-the-way-in-ethical-ai