Category: Social Implications of Technology

Introduction In 2019, IEEE Working Group P7014 began efforts to develop a ‘Standard for Ethical Considerations in Emulated Empathy in…  Read More

There is huge potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to bring massive benefits to under-served populations, advancing equal access to public services such as health, education, social assistance, or public transportation, AI can also drive inequality, concentrating wealth, resources, and decision-making power in the hands of a few countries, companies, or citizens. Artificial intelligence for equity (AI4Eq) calls upon academics, AI developers, civil society, and government policy-makers to work collaboratively toward a technological transformation that increases the benefits to society, reduces inequality, and aims to leave no one behind.

Over the years IEEE Organisational Units (OUs) have been endeavoring to increase gender diversity of speakers in panels at IEEE…  Read More

IEEE International Leadership Conference (ILC) 2021 is the eight in a series of Leadership Conferences focused on providing professional women…  Read More

From the 1970s onward, we started to dream of the leisure society in which, thanks to technological progress and consequent increase in productivity, working hours would be minimized and we would all live in abundance. We all could devote our time almost exclusively to personal relationships, contact with nature, sciences, the arts, playful activities, and so on. Today, this utopia seems more unattainable than it did then. Since the 21st century, we have seen inequalities increasingly accentuated: of the increase in wealth in the United States between 2006 and 2018, adjusted for inflation and population growth, more than 87% went to the richest 10% of the population, and the poorest 50% lost wealth .

Unless we create real boundaries, enforced by legislation, the social media giants will also walk away from the chaos they have enabled.

Understanding the societal trajectory induced by AI, and anticipating its directions so that we might apply it for achieving equity, is a sociological, ethical, legal, cultural, generational, educational, and political problem.

In 2020, our flagship ISTAS conference and the cosponsored conferences were huge successes, with record attendance, partly because going virtual allowed wider participation.

Abstract Since 2016, drones have been deployed in various development projects in sub-Saharan Africa, where trials, tests, and studies have…  Read More

Crises expose the fragility and resilience of our sociotechnical systems – from healthcare to financial markets, internet connectivity, and local communities. Submissions are especially invited on but not limited to the following topics intersecting with COVID-19 and crises:

Video doorbells and related technologies, along with the data they generate, will continue to be abused, undermining the security of what is being pitched as a security technology.

With the century termed one of digital connect from the use of desktops at work, laptops at homes and handy…  Read More

For better or worse, we have become familiar with the idea that technologies profile people to deliver a service of…  Read More

We can perhaps accept Weil’s starting premise of obligations as fundamental concepts, based on which we can also reasonably accept her assertion that “obligations … all stem, without exception, from the vital needs of the human being.”

The IEEE International Humanitarian Technology Conference (IEEE IHTC) is a Multi-Regional Conference Series rotating between R7 (Canada), R8 (Africa, Europe…  Read More

Hosted by the Government of South Africa through the Department of Science and Innovation and Supported by the European Commission…  Read More

Examining how face recognition software is used to identify and sort citizenship within mechanisms like the Biometric Air Exit (BAE) is immensely important; alongside this, the process of how “citizen” and “noncitizen” is defined, as data points within larger mechanisms like the BAE, need to be made transparent.

Public Interest Technology (PIT) is defined as “technology practitioners who focus on social justice, the common good, and/or the public…  Read More

Damon Krukowski’s Ways of Hearing does for digital sound what Berger’s Ways of Seeing did for the reproduced image. He wants us to question what we hear, as well as what we’re no longer hearing, in the era of digital audio.

SusTech 2021 invites undergraduate and graduate students to submit abstracts for the Student Poster Contest by the extended deadline of…  Read More