GETTING-Plurality: AI Governance and the Human Genome Project

You’re invited to the next GETTING-Plurality Research Workshop with Lilian Coral, Vice President of Technology & Democracy Programs and Head of the Open Technology Institute at New America.

About the Speakers

Author: Lilian Coral is the Vice President of Technology & Democracy Programs and Head of the Open Technology Institute at New America.

Prior to joining New America, Coral was Knight Foundation’s director of national strategy + technology innovation, where she developed the foundation’s citizen-centered Smart Cities strategy and managed the national portfolio of investments. Totaling more than $55 million across more than 120 grantees, the portfolio centered around data accessibility and trust, urban mobility, and technology in public spaces. Coral joined Knight after serving as chief data officer for Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, leading the mayor’s directive on open data beyond the lens of transparency and towards his vision of a data-driven Los Angeles. Coral managed the growth of Los Angeles’ open data program to 1,100 public datasets, the expansion of the use of data science and analytics, and the development of more than 15 user-centered digital services. Of note, was her development of the GeoHub, a first-of-its kind data management solution for integrating geospatial information across the City of Los Angeles’ 41 departments.

Coral has spent nearly 20 years working on a wide range of policy and technology issues and has worked with labor unions, NGOs, foundations and local, state and federal government to transform the way government uses data and technology to serve its citizens.

Commentator: Anna Lewis is a bioethicist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Her work focuses on how advances in technology can and should impact lives. Most of her work relates to genomic technologies. She is particularly interested in how approaches from bioethics can be both adapted for and learn from the AI space.

Pre-reading

A Historical Model for AI Regulation and Collaboration

In March of 2023, the CEOs of top AI companies penned a letter comparing the risk of extinction from artificial intelligence (AI) to the risk of nuclear war. The letter succeeded in making headlines, dredging up imagery from the Terminator franchise, but it failed to steer the world’s approach to AI in a helpful direction. In fact, many of the ideas around what AI can achieve has been influenced by the notion that it’s as powerful as a nuclear weapon. But by “weaponizing” this technology, we’ve made it much harder to regulate, as it has undoubtedly led to policies aimed at stockpiling resources to achieve national supremacy over the tech.

Instead of hoarding access to AI and focusing solely on risk mitigation, universities, national laboratories, and industries from around the world need to work together to advance the technology’s benefits. This may seem like an overly hopeful, impossible task, but not too long ago, humanity successfully accomplished such collaboration and advanced the benefits of another controversial technology: genetic sequencing. In 1990, governments around the world, with the leadership of the United States, began a 13-year effort to map human DNA through the Human Genome Project (HGP). I believe we can achieve such cooperation again to ensure AI advancements help humanity thrive.

Workshop series logistics

The GETTING-Plurality Research Workshop is a series convened by the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation. In each session of the research workshop, we will discuss one paper focused on emerging technologies’ democratic potential or their governance. Our aim is to build a vibrant, cross-disciplinary scholarly community and support the development of cutting-edge work capable of confronting a new era of technological innovation, and its ethical and governance implications.

This 75-minute workshop is entirely virtual and will be conducted over Zoom — please register to receive the link. Papers will be pre-circulated, and all attendees are expected to read them. A full-group discussion of the work will follow a brief presentation by the author(s) and commentator feedback. Attendees are expected to join with their camera-on, as possible, and engage in the group discussion.

Additional questions?

Please email our graduate student coordinator, Uma Ilavarasan, at uilavarasan@g.harvard.edu.