Former YouTube engineer Guillaume Chaslot, algorithmic bias researcher Safiya Umoja Noble, and Dutch lawmaker Marietje Schaake among leaders headlining Mozilla’s 10th Annual MozFest
London (August 28th, 2019) — Leaders at the forefront of making artificial intelligence more responsible and ethical, including former YouTube engineer Guillaume Chaslot, algorithmic bias researcher Safiya Umoja Noble, First Draft co-founder Claire Wardle, and Dutch lawmaker Marietje Schaake, will headline a weeklong gathering this October of more than 2,500 global activists working to create a healthier internet.
Organised by Mozilla, the nonprofit creator of Firefox and other open source tools, the 10th Annual MozFest will take place including events from October 21-25 at the RSA and the main festival on October 26 and 27 at Ravensbourne University London. The event will feature talks, panels, interactive art installations, product demos, and workshops exploring the most critical issues facing the health of the internet.
The theme of this year’s festival is “More Responsible Artificial Intelligence,” with programming exploring topics ranging from how to make recommendation engines less toxic to ensuring search engine algorithms don’t promote racism and sexism.
Internet health leaders from around the world, including Kenya, the Netherlands, India, Germany, and Spain, are among this year’s speakers, including:
- Engineer Guillaume Chaslot, who helped build YouTube’s recommendation algorithm but is now leading efforts to spur greater transparency into how online platforms recommend content.
- Claire Wardle is the co-founder of First Draft News, a first-of-its-kind nonprofit dedicated to fact-checking online media and user-generated content. Wardle recently collaborated with The New York Times on a video op-ed on “deepfakes” in which she initially appeared to be the singer Adelle.
- Safiya Umoja Noble, author of the book “Algorithms of Oppression”, which exposes the racial and gender biases embedded in search engines.
- Professor Bitange Ndemo, who radically transformed Kenya’s technology infrastructure as Permanent Secretary for Ministry of Information and Communications from 2005-2013.
- Marietje Schaake, a former member of the European Parliament who has been called Europe’s “most wired politician”
Says Mark Surman, Mozilla’s Executive Director: “The AI that shapes our lives is often opaque — we the users don’t understand how it works. Tech giants like Amazon and Google seem omnipotent. And we see new technology deployed without asking, Is this responsible? Is this ethical?”
“At MozFest 2019, we’ll focus the collective power of the internet health movement on making today’s AI more humane. For one full week in London, we’ll create art to showcase how flawed AI can sometimes be — and then write code to fix it. We’ll brainstorm products and policies that put social responsibility, ethics, and the user first. And we’ll envision the challenges and opportunities of the decade to come.”
The weeklong MozFest will take place in two locations. From Monday, October 21 to Friday, October 25, MozFest will hold workshops, talks, one-day conferences, and film screenings at MozFest House (Royal Society of Arts, 8 John Adam St, London WC2N 6EZ). The weekend programming takes place from Saturday, October 26 and Sunday, October 27th at Ravensbourne University London (6 Penrose Way, Greenwich Peninsula, London SE10 0EW, UK). Weekend tickets can be purchased here.