The volume of information available to human rights practitioners has grown steadily since the globalization of Internet access and the widespread adoption of smartphones across geographies, cultures, and socioeconomic classes. This vast material landscape creates an unprecedented visual record of the experiences of a significant percentage of humanity. When properly collected and analyzed, this material can help human rights analysts, fact-finders, and researchers reconstruct war crimes, human rights violations, and terrorist acts taking place in locations that offer limited or no physical access. At the same time, practitioners and organizations have been confronted with new challenges in dealing with the collection of massive amounts of data from a distance. This situation has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis as travel has become restricted and researchers, analysts, and fact-finders must rely on online digital information to investigate and validate claims of human rights abuse. In this talk, Dr. Aronson will describe two case studies of how he and his colleagues have confronted these challenges with partners from across the human rights domain. He will pay particular attention to ethical approach that is taken in doing their work.
This event is part of our Towards Life 3.0: Ethics and Technology in the 21st Century is a talk series organized and facilitated by Dr. Mathias Risse, Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, and Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights, Global Affairs, and Philosophy. Drawing inspiration from the title of Max Tegmark’s book, Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, the series draws upon a range of scholars, technology leaders, and public interest technologists to address the ethical aspects of the long-term impact of artificial intelligence on society and human life.
