IGF 2018 WS #431
Mapping social relevant Algorithms. Automatization Atlas

Organizer 1: Spielkamp Matthias, AlgorithmWatch

Speaker 1: Lorena Jaume-Palasí, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 2: Valeria Milanés, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Speaker 3: Miguel Luengo Oroz, Intergovernmental Organization, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)

Moderator

Solana Larsen, Mozilla

Online Moderator

tbc

Rapporteur

tbc

Format

Other - 90 Min
Format description: Workshop

Interventions

• short introductory research overview by every panellist on stage
• moderated panel discussion
• Q&A session that includes the audience as well as the online participants

Diversity

Participants will come from governments, civil society, international organizations and the private sector, from the Global South as well as the North.

In recent months, discussion about how to regulate the use of algorithms has intensified. However, both the conflicts they are said to provoke and the added value they offer remain (too) unclear. While a few use cases from the US are internationally well known, there are many other countries and continents making use of automation processes both in the public and private sector. Many of them are highly relevant to society but escape the eye of the regulator. There is a need to map cases of algorithms used by both governments and the private sector on all continents – in order to better understand the different cultural contexts where automatization is happening and the challenges and opportunities it presents. The session participants will either show use cases from the public or private sector, or present local mappings of algorithms in use and existing regulation. Main objective of the conversation is to provide criteria and best practices helping to understand where automation processes take place, what makes them relevant to society, which mapping methodologies are useful and which regulatory practices exist.
Planned speakers:
• Miguel Luengo Oroz, UN Global Pulse, Switzerland
• Valeria Milanés, Asociación Derechos al Consumidor, Argentina
• Katrin Bornemann, Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany
• Kamal Bhattacharya, IBM Director, Africa
• Lorena Jaume-Palasí, AlgorithmWatch, Spain

Social media campaign in advance to collect questions
Extensive Q&A Session
Audience Poll

Algorithms are at the heart of orchestrating automatization processes in our everyday life: They are the basis for credit scoring, pre-determining whether an individual can buy a house, rent a car or get a phone contract. They are a vital part of producing the results of diagnostic medical sonography, measuring potential heart diseases. They are the core of search engines and social media, but also part of the automation processes in governmental border control. They manage and automate a number of highly relevant aspects of everyday life. Due to the commercialization of the Internet and progress in the development of artificial intelligence they will permeate and impact society and human beings even deeper in the next years. However, when governments, civil society and other stakeholders discuss AI and algorithms, examples are lacking. Most discussions revolve around future scenarios, and there is almost no awareness of already existing automation processes already using algorithms or AI in need of thorough evaluation. This needs to change.

Online Participation

Social Media, e.g. Twitter and Facebook with the possibility to send questions beforehand
Opportunities to include online attendees to the Q&A session will be provided