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SUMMARY:How can AI be used for Social Good? Lessons from Africa’s Voices
  Foundation - Sharath Srinivasan\; Luke Church 
DTSTART:20190307T170000Z
DTEND:20190307T183000Z
UID:TALK120700@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:cm2007@cam.ac.uk
DESCRIPTION:Advanced computational technologies suffer from a growing cata
 logue of failure and abuse and heightened concern over their use to extrac
 t and harvest personal data to build systems that commodify\, disempower o
 r manipulate ‘users'. Yet are standard large-scale social research instr
 uments such as surveys sufficiently better? In Global South contexts\, cit
 izens are too often commodified research subjects\, disempowered in the ve
 ry act of handing over personal information to an opaque research exercise
  with obscure policy or intervention outcomes.  \n\nThis seminar explores 
 learnings from Africa’s Voices Foundation\, a non-profit start-up spun o
 ut combined socio-political and technological research at Cambridge. From 
 Nairobi and Cambridge\, AVF works with partners such as UNICEF\, Oxfam\, t
 he MasterCard Foundation and many others to help them “listen intelligen
 tly” to the citizens whom they serve with scale\, depth and speed. To do
  this\, we design socio-technical systems that subvert the extractive\, co
 mmodifying and dehumanising logics of mainstream artificial intelligence a
 nd research instrument approaches. This requires accepting the methodologi
 cal and technical burden that comes from engaging with citizens as social 
 agents rather than extracting from subjects as sources of data. To listen_
 rather_than_sense\, we use AI to augment human capabilities for interpreti
 ng social evidence rather than to automate data-driven decision-making. AV
 F’s learnings shed a light on what technological innovation\, driven by 
 socially-conscious applications of AI\, might look like if not borne of co
 mmodification\, power or control. \n\n*Join us for a talk with:*\n \n*Dr. 
 Sharath Srinivasan* (Executive Director/Co-Founder\, Africa’s Voices Fou
 ndation\; Co-Director\, CGHR)\;\n\n*Luke Church* (Director of Innovation &
  Learning\, Africa’s Voices Foundation\; Affiliated Lecturer\, Computer 
 Laboratory\, Cambridge)\n\nThe talk and Q&A will be followed by drinks wit
 h the speakers. All are welcome!
LOCATION: Room S1\, Alison Richard Building\, Sidgwick Site\, 7 West Road\
 , Cambridge\, CB3 9DT
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