Workshop on human rights and AI

The AI & Equality Workshop - A Toolkit for Human Rights - was developed in collaboration with Women at the Table, the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and a human rights programme officer at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). It consists of 2 parts:

Part 1

• Human rights module: a simple introduction to human rights developed by the OHCHR and currently delivered by the programme leader (20 min + 10-15min for discussion).
• Applied Research Conversation: a short presentation of research by an academic colleague focused on advancing knowledge in this area. (algorithmic bias, social impact of machine learning algorithms, use cases of bias in automated decision systems, AI and law) (20 min + 10 min for discussion).

Part 2

• <AI & Equality> Coding Toolbox: based on a methodology developed at EPFL that uses a jupyter notebook and a discussion format to draw the line between human rights principles and code (and was the subject of a 2021 master thesis at EPFL).

Speakers

Sofia Kypraiou

Sofia developed the <AI & Equality> Toolbox workshop and methodology as her Masters Thesis in Data Science at EPFL in 2021. She continues to lead the technical evolution of the project at <AI & Equality> and related components.

Caitlin Kraft-Buchman

Caitlin is the CEO and Founder of Women at the Table – a gender equality & systems change CSO based in Geneva, Switzerland. She ideated and coordinates the <AI & Equality> Human Rights Toolbox. An initiative of Women at the Table, the Toolbox started as a conversation with the Women’s Rights Division of OHCHR (the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights) with Veronica Birga (then Division Head) and Asako Hattori in 2017, morphed into a luncheon with OHCHR and EPFL Professors Nisheeth Vishnoi and Elisa Celis, both now at Yale, and resulted in the creation of the first <AI & Gender> Workshop at EPFL hosted by Professor Daniel Gatica-Perez, the EPFL Digital Humanities Lab, and EPFL Equalities Office in 2019 & 2020. When Sofia Kypraiou joined Women at the Table as one of our inaugural Tech Fellows in 2021 she dedicated her EPFL Masters Thesis to a validated methodology for the <AI & Equality> Human Rights Toolbox, and a new adventure began!

You can register for the event here: https://forms.gle/7e6R2Nj7nu8wdBfJ8