Digital Medusa and this year's United Nations Internet Governance Forum
Digital Medusa is in Japan to attend the Internet Governance Forum. Here are a few things that Digital Medusa will be doing at IGF, but also there are some non-IGF related meetings and topics that Digital Medusa will be promoting at IGF.
Algorithmic transparency and the Internet
Digital Medusa will moderate this session. It is a more contextualized approach to the algorithmic transparency discussion, showing the life of a query and asking questions that can help companies do better with AI and algorithmic transparency and explainability. Here is the description of the session: https://intgovforum.org/en/content/igf-2023-day-0-event-21-under-the-hood-approaches-to-algorithmic-transparency
A layered approach to Internet governance: can it stop Internet fragmentation:
Digital Medusa is the co-organizer of this workshop along with Internet Society where we will discuss if the layered approach to Internet governance, whereby the regulations and policies make a distinction between infrastructure and content could avoid fragmentation. At some point I wrote about the idea of a layerless Internet. But this approach might be good for short term policymaking not to cause fragmentation. For the longer term, we need to monitor the evolution of the Internet and see what elements become Internet infrastructure and what we can do about it.
Digital Trust and Safety Partnership Open Forum: Digital Medusa is the head of outreach and engagement for Digital Trust and Safety Partnership. DTSP has a booth at this year’s IGF and we have an open forum to talk about something Digital Medusa deeply cares about: global digital trust and safety for a global and open Internet.
Encryption and Internet Infrastructure: Another workshop Digital Medusa will participate in (will contribute from the floor) is the Domain Name System privacy workshop organized by ICANN. This is a much needed discussion as we need to move towards encrypting infrastructure. Recently Digital Medusa was awarded a small grant by Internet Society as a part of global encryption day series. The ISOC-Digital Medusa session will be about encrypting Digital Infrastructure which includes DNS. Register to attend the virtual session which will happen on October 19.
Platform governance goes beyond big tech governance.Especially when it comes to election readiness, alternative platforms can enable or hamper election participation. This is a project that Digital Medusa has been doing for the National Democratic Institute. We are at the final stages of the project, if you want to discuss more, contact us.
Human centered approach to digital transformation: Recently Digital Medusa has started doing research and technical review of human centered digital transformation for USAID. Questions include: are human centered approaches all positive? What are good examples of human centered approaches to digital transformation, for example does meaningful connectivity require or include human centered approaches to digital transformation? There are a few IGF workshops that discuss directly or indirectly the issue of human centered approaches to digital transformation.
Namely:
IGF 2023 WS #481 Barriers to Inclusion:Strategies for People with disability https://www.intgovforum.org/en/content/igf-2023-ws-481-barriers-to-inclusionstrategies-for-people-with-disability
IGF 2023 WS #165 Beyond universality: the meaningful connectivity imperative
IGF 2023 WS #477 Framework to Develop Gender-responsive Cybersecurity Policy
We will be present in those workshops and Farzaneh is holding ad hoc and informal consultations at this stage with a range of stakeholders especially those involved with digital transformation.
It’s time to talk about AI and Internet governance: much of the conversations about AI have been at a very high level and the ideas for standardization of AI governance have been broad without contextualization. But now the time has arrived to actually think about Internet enabled AI apps and technologies that could affect the governance of the web and other parts of the Internet. Hopefully the AI talks at IGF will be more focused. Instead of requesting multistakeholder governance for AI in general, we should look into which parts actually need a multistakeholder governance process. So start small. Like we did for the Domain Name System. Not all aspects of the Internet are run by multistakeholder processes. Some specific functions are: for example the coordination of policy development for allocation of domain names is run by a multistakeholder model. This is the direction Digital Medusa will be taking when it comes to governance of AI. Digital Medusa cares about the Internet. When AI affects the governance and health of the Internet, then it is directly related to Digital Medusa’s mission. Hence from now on to be precise, we use the term Internet enabled AI. We might have to refine it later but it means all the AI products that depend on the Internet to function and/or affect the governance of the Internet.
Sanctions and the Internet/Open source human rights impact assessment:our job in bringing about the Internet to everyone is not done and sanctions can still have an effect on access to some parts of the Internet. Open source digital governance and human rights impact assessment are also still on the top of Digital Medusa’s agenda. We might be able to talk about these different issues at the IGF or if you are interested to know more about it, let us know.
If you are not at the IGF and want to know more about any of these projects and discussions, send Digital Medusa an email.
You can also follow up on more updates on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/farzaneh-badiei-phd-768224b5/