The Bristol and Bath tech cluster has more meetups per head than any technology cluster in the UK – we believe it’s that connectedness, that support and that level of knowledge-sharing that drives innovation, and makes our region the best place to work in tech. So we’ve decided to highlight the awesome groups keeping us connected.
Today we’re introducing you to Tech Ethics Bristol.
What’s your Meet-up?
Technology is deeply embedded in our society redefining our social interactions, healthcare, education, public policy, jobs and every aspect of our lives.
The use of AI and emerging technologies brings an array of benefits, but this also comes with challenges and raised ethical concerns about the social implication and potential unintended consequences these technologies can have in our society.
Tech Ethics Bristol is organised by a team of volunteers who are passionate about building a fair and equal society where technology is a catalyst for positive change. Designing a better future is everyone’s responsibility and we want to create a space for the local and global community to discuss, learn and exchange ideas in an open and inclusive way.
Who’s it for?
We value a multidisciplinary approach and we welcome businesses, academics, students and people from diverse backgrounds and levels of expertise.
What’s the format of your event?
Our first event series will be a number of online interactive events which will be talks or Q & A sessions with experts in the Tech, AI & Data Ethics space. We will follow this with in-person events later on in the year when we are able to put these on.
The Tech Ethics Bristol Launch Event on Friday, April 16 at 12:30pm is going to be a lunchtime talk, featuring Miranda Mowbray on “Bias in AI text processing: Bristolians and Stochastic Parrots”
In this presentation Miranda will talk about the demographic bias that can occur in natural language processing, focusing on the large language models that Emily Bender and Timnit Gebru recently described as “stochastic parrots”.
She will discuss what the AI text-generator GPT-2 associates with Bristolians, and why. Miranda will also be giving some practical tips on how to deal with something at work that we might disagree with ethically.
This is a free online event streaming via the CrowdCast platform. We will provide the link to the event on this page the week before the event. The evening before the event, we’ll email those that RSVPed with more details about what to expect when using CrowdCast. Find more information and sign up here!
If you could invite anyone to your meet-up who would it be?
We want to feature experts in the Tech Ethics space and would be keen to invite thought leaders from the academic, business and public sectors to share their wisdom in this space so we can get everyone talking about this and sharing best practice
What are some of the typical subjects you discuss?
Our events will cover a variety of topics related to Technology and Ethics, including:
- Data and Privacy
- Algorithmic Fairness
- Democracy and Misinformation
- Value Alignment and Human Rights
- AI Ethics and Governance
- Value Sensitive Design
- AI and Sustainability
- Jobs and Automation
- Accessibility
Meetup details:
Join our Meetup group today to hear about future events!
Brought to you by Collective Intelligence and sponsored by ADLIB recruitment.
If you would like to be a speaker or suggest a topic for a Meetup, please get in touch with the Meetup organisers: Karin Rudolph at karin@collective-intelligence.co.uk or Alex Cosgrove at alex@adlib-recruitment.co.uk
