Curated & Moderated by:
Anna-Kynthia Bousdoukou

Ethan Zuckerman

Associate Professor of Public Policy, Information and Communicatio at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Director of the Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure

Ethan Zuckerman is Αssociate Professor of Public Policy, Information and Communication at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Director of the Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure. His research focuses on the use of media as a tool for social change, the use of new media technologies by activists as well as the use of alternative business and governance models for the Internet. He is the author of "Mistrust: How Losing Trust in Institutions Provides Tools to Transform Them" (2021) and "Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection" (2013). Along with Rebecca MacKinnon, Zuckerman co-founded the international blogging community "Global Voices", which showcases news and opinions from citizen media in more than 150 nations and 30 languages. Previously, Zuckerman directed the Center for Civic Media at MIT and taught at the MIT Media Lab. In 2000, he founded Geekcorps, a technology volunteer organization that sends IT specialists to work on projects in developing nations, with a focus on West Africa. He also helped found Tripod.com, one of the web's first "personal publishing" sites. He and his family live in Berkshire County in western Massachusetts.

Τhe risk of AI is that we take this unfairness, and we put it in code and we can’t even interrogate it anymore. What is the best way to react to these AI systems? It is to use this experience of trying to understand the biases of these systems not just to question the technology, but to question the social disparities that underlie the technology.