Speaking Events

University of Waterloo’s Critical Media Lab

May 16, 2022 (In-person and virtual)

Speaker “AI 5 Ways”

More details to come.

More from the organizers

The Critical Media Lab (CML) is a cross-disciplinary, research-creation initiative developed in the English Department at the University of Waterloo. The CML fosters the creation of new media projects that explore the impact of technology on society and the human condition. It was launched quietly on campus in the fall of 2008, before occupying various locations in the city of Kitchener, Ontario. The CML is currently located in the Communitech Hub, at 151 Charles Street West.

The Futures Archives

Air date: April 2022

Guest Speaker on Design Observer’s Podcast “The Futures Archive”

In this episode, I join others to talk about Planned Obsolescence, a topic covered in more depth in my 2012 book, User Experience in the Age of Sustainability. I want to acknowledge that my own Caribbean upbringing brings a distinct nuance to this discussion. This topic also goes to the heart of why it is important to build diverse teams with other lived experiences. This gives a fuller picture of a designed product & service's own viability in markets, not driven solely by the bubble of "1st world" thinking, only.

More from the organizers

“The Futures Archive is a podcast from Design Observer that looks at the history of human-centred design with a critical eye to its future. In each episode, we begin with an object, interrogating the motives and methods that put people—and their complex needs and desires—at the center of the design process. From research to iteration to manufacturing and distribution, we’ll look at design as more than the sum of its countless parts—learning from the “what” and searching for the “why”—as we explore, together, the possibilities for our collective future.
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NJIT & the American Center for Life Cycle Assessment the Symposium

March 28-31, 2022 (Virtual)

– Guest Speaker “Environmental Life Cycle Assessment in Design”

I will be part of a panel discussing challenges around, design, data, UI and the Designer in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)

More from the organizers

“Truly sustainable design is increasingly driven by a steady stream of reliable data. What was once a field that relied almost completely on heuristics, sustainable design now leverages computationally guided workflows in conjunction with robust databases. How does this data-driven approach to sustainability liberate design where appearance is now decoupled from substance?”

University of Waterloo’s Critical Media Lab

February 10, 2022 (Virtual Conference)

Co-Moderator of Panel “Amazon’s AI Facial Rekognition”

As a make and think session prior to Wendy Chun’s lecture on Data Discrimination. I will be moderating a session with attendees in a breakout room. Our discussion around Amazon’s facial recognition program which identifies criminals and misidentified Congress members as criminals.

More from the organizers

In her most recent work, Wendy Chun reveals how polarization is a goal—not an error—within big data and machine learning. Correlation, which grounds big data’s predictive potential, stems from twentieth-century eugenic attempts to “breed” a better future. Recommender systems foster angry clusters of sameness through homophily. Users are “trained” to become authentically predictable via a politics and technology of recognition. Machine learning and data analytics thus seek to disrupt the future by making disruption impossible. Chun will address these issues directly and engage in a disruptive conversation with two featured respondents and a live-streamed audience.

IEEE ISTAS21 Conference

October 29, -31, 2021 (Virtual Conference)

Co-Chair of Panel “A Conversation at the Intersection of Race, AI & Technology” with Dr. Safiya U. Noble.

Safiya Noble is an Associate Professor at UCLA, where she acts as Co-Founder and Co-Director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry. Noble works within African American Studies and Gender Studies, and works with the University of Oxford on the Oxford Commission on AI & Good Governance. Noble is on the boards of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative and the NYU Center Critical Race and Digital Studies where she works to serve people vulnerable to online harassment. She is the author of the book Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism and is frequently cited by news outlets such as the BBC and CNN for her expertise in algorithmic discrimination and technology bias.

This event centred upon the conversations around the topics of race, AI and technology with audience interaction. See IEEE ISTAS21 website for more details on speaker line-up.

IEEE ISTAS21 Conference

October 29, -31, 2021 (Virtual Conference)

Cross-disciplinary Panel on “AI Literacy: A Cross-disciplinary Exploration”

This special session will foster an interdisciplinary conversation with the audience on AI literacy through a roundtable discussion consisting of archivists, digital humanists, literary scholars, and philosophers from several disciplinary backgrounds. Together, we will engage in an open conversation to address a two-part question, namely: how can scholars and the university intervene against technology systems that disproportionately marginalize or discriminate against minorities? And how can they use this intervention to simultaneously platform individuals or groups who can surface counter-narratives within the critical discourse surrounding representative technology and its role within the broader fields of policy, geopolitics, and governance? Our conversation will focus on (1) the overarching ethical principles guiding collection, processing, and reuse of data; (2) algorithmic bias, including racial bias in data and discriminatory values in design; (3) the situated and relational nature of data, data practices, and data interpretation; and (4) the practical importance of equitable, open-sourced design within public and private institutions.