The College of Europe in Natolin organised two more talks about human rights in the digital era. The first talk, on Friday, 21 September 2018, looked at the role of AI in society— students benefitted from several visual case studies that illustrated how machine learning algorithms function and what role training data plays therein. We looked at how algorithms are based on the data that our societies generate and can therefore learn from—and exacerbate—social biases, and discussed what steps we could take towards improving or regulating algorithms.
The second talk took place on Monday, 1 October 2018, and looked at social media and its impact on democracy. We discussed topics such as free speech online, chilling effects due to online harassment or abuse, and how to manage and deal with such issues. We also looked at how fake news and disinformation was able to spread on social media so rapidly and what free speech implications, if any, this brings.