Advith's Calendar

Building Inclusive Tech with the Global South

Event Type

Lecture

Sponsor

Center for Global Studies

Virtual

Date

Feb 11, 2025   12:00 pm  

Speaker

Payal Arora is a Professor of Inclusive AI Cultures at Utrecht University and Co-founder of FemLab, a feminist futures of work initiative. She is a digital anthropologist and comes with two decades of user experiences among low-income communities, especially in the Global South, to shape inclusive designs and policies. She is the author of award-winning books including the “The Next Billion Users” with Harvard Press. Engadget (Top 5 in the ‘Technorati top 100’ and Times endorsed ‘best blogs on tech’) stated that her Harvard book is one of “the most interesting, thought-provoking books on science and technology we can find.” She has an upcoming book ‘From Pessimism to Promise: Lessons from the Global South on Designing Inclusive Tech” with MIT Press and Harper Collins India. Forbes named her the “next billion champion” and “the right kind of person to reform tech.” About 150 international media outlets have covered her work including The BBC, Het Financieele Dagblad, The Economist, Quartz, 99% Invisible, Tech Crunch, The Boston Globe, F.A.Z, The Nation and CBC. She has consulted on tech innovation and digital inclusion for diverse organizations such as IDEO, Adobe, Spotify, Google, UNESCO, KPMG, GE, UNHCR, and HP and has given more than 350+ talks in 115 cities in 67 countries alongside figures like Jimmy Wales and Steve Wozniak and TEDx talks on the future of the internet and 'Why we need less innovation.' She sits on several boards for organizations such as Soteryx (a NYC data security company), Columbia University’s Earth Institute and World Women Global Council in New York. She has held Fellow positions at GE, ZEMKI, ITSRio, MICA, and NYU and is a Rockefeller Bellagio Resident Alumnus. She has a MA in International Policy from Harvard University and a PhD in Language, Literacy and Technology from Columbia University. She is Indian, Irish, and American and currently lives in Amsterdam.

Views

2

Originating Calendar

Center for Global Studies: Events

Abstract: What actions and innovations are needed to create an inclusive AI system? In the last decade, affordable mobile phones, and data plans have brought the 'next billion users' online - mostly young people from the Global South who are fast come online and are engaging in ways that go beyond our common understandings. Today, 90 percent of the world's youth today live outside the West. Just India and China alone are home to most users today. Despite having limited resources, they are increasingly becoming digital creators and innovators in this AI driven era. Join Payal Arora in conversation as she draws from her MIT Press book 'From Pessimism to Promise' longlisted for the 2024 Porchlight Business Book Awards, to lay out a pathway for inclusive digital futures, that is fundamentally cross-cultural, collaborative, and equity oriented. She argues that it is time we stop underestimating and instead, start understanding the creative potential of the Global South. We should seek ways to ethically co-create with different cultures, contexts, and conditions to rethink digital opportunities, online safeguards, and creative economies with the world's majority. Inclusion is not an altruistic act. It is an essential element to build a global community and generate sustainable solutions in how we work, play, love, and live with the planet's limited resources. 

Interesting Links: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262049306/from-pessimism-to-promise/__;!!DZ3fjg!6ayTc4YlimgfyXaZqT_nxD7lph_VKMVuMSRxe3JFbaxa2gSK0RYUJrGBUxpLeczGE9VXVfnkBbnrKiTWCw$

Inclusive AI Lab: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://inclusiveailab.org/__;!!DZ3fjg!6ayTc4YlimgfyXaZqT_nxD7lph_VKMVuMSRxe3JFbaxa2gSK0RYUJrGBUxpLeczGE9VXVfnkBblZJs_zTA$