The Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) is a subsidiary body of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and the UNs focal point for science, technology and innovation (STI) for development. It is a forum for strategic planning, sharing lessons learned and best practices, providing foresight about critical trends in STI in key…
Virtual Activism attended the first consultation with the Ad Hoc Committee to Elaborate a Comprehensive International Convention on Countering the Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Criminal Purposes. The session was the First Intersessional Consultation, as mandated by operative paragraph 10 of General Assembly resolution 75/282, 24-25 March 2022, and it took place at…
Humanitarian Icons Font Awesome is an industry-standard collection of icons that are used in web development. In a surprise collaboration between OCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) and Font Awesome, the latter created what it terms ‘humanitarian icons’ that are all free. These icons depict themes of interest to the humanitarian…
In the Context of the Commission on the Status of Women ’22, VA’s executive director, Marlyn Tadros, participated in the Arab States MENA Regional Caucus. Climate Change was one of the top issues on the agenda.
Every year, we post about games to play and workshops to attend to understand the intersection between human rights, ethics, and emerging technologies. Here are a few: 1- Workshop: Defending human rights in the age of artificial intelligence: this is a free and open workshop organized by UNESCO and UNITAR. The course break down complex…
As someone who teaches user experience, among other things, this session at MozFest 22 was particularly interesting for me. What I knew as persuasive design, addictive design, and emotional design, all of which I found unethical, are now called ‘dark patterns’. Dark Patterns refer to interface design tactics in digital products to persuade one into…
Another session I attended at Mozfest 22 was Fostering Global South engagement in AI and data governance: Building a community and research agenda. The session was organized by Jhalak M. Kakkar, Centre for Communication Governance, and Prateek Sibal, UNESCO. The use of AI and Big Data-based systems is challenging data protection and privacy principles, developed…
One of MozFest 22’s themes was about “decolonising AI”. What does the term really mean? As MozFest put it, worldviews, practices and algorithms embedded in the knowledge of the Global Majority, African, Asian, Middle Eastern, Latin American, Black, Indigenous, and people who have been racialized as ‘ethnic minorities’ – and have largely been kept apart…
