Ubiquitous recorders are capturing our daily sounds on the street, at our work and leisure places, and in our homes. The study of the cultural, political, ethical, and technological impact of automating sound and incorporating it into different systems is in its infancy, and scholars and technologists often do not have a good understanding of what kind of data, what kind of techniques and algorithms, and what kinds of interpretations can be drawn from audio data in systems that use A.I. technologies. This event is part of our Acoustic Surveillance and Big Data Series and will ask participants what social and personal values are at play in given scenarios involving sound and voice recording and what concerns they have in terms of potential ethical or policy issues. 

Regulation and Responsibility: Join Microsoft’s Julie Brill, corporate VP and deputy general counsel, for a fireside chat and Q/A with Professor Sharon Strover from the Moody College of Communication. They’ll cover privacy, data protection, and tech policy.

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Join Sam Woolley from Institute of the Future at UT's Digital Media Speaker Series this month. The current wave of computational propaganda has taken the world by surprise. Technology firms, policy makers, journalists and the general public are scrambling to respond to the societal threats posed by disinformation and politically motivated trolling. This talk outlines one method for responding to these issues: the Ethical Operating System (ethicalOS.org), a toolkit for anticipating future uses of technology. Jane McGonigal and Samuel Woolley, with support from Omidyar Network, constructed this guide to help a wide variety of groups think about how to design technology with democracy and human rights in mind. The toolkit has been used by major companies in Silicon Valley, by legislators at the state and federal level and by students in Stanford's design school and intro to computer science courses. It's time, however, to put into the hands of the U.S. public so that they can help in the fight against disinformation and manipulative technology.

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