Privacy On The Ground

Machine Unlearning is a field of AI research gaining attention in the policy world. It's often discussed in the context of privacy, particularly in relation to the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the EU AI Act as well as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). At World Privacy Forum's tutorial at the Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV) in...

The shift to generative AI has exposed the gaps between data and AI governance policy and real world uses and impacts of generative AI. Jason Tamara Widjaja can see the disconnects first hand from his perch leading the AI research and AI governance team as Executive Director of AI at MSD - the global biopharma company some in the US and Canada know better by the name Merck & Co. In this talk recor...

April Chin is co-CEO of AI assessment company Resaro, one of a small group of invite-only "premier" members of Singapore's AI governance program, AI Verify. In this second episode in Privacy on the Ground's series about AI Verify, Chin discusses the evolution of AI Verify, the methods and approaches it has developed and piloted, recent initiatives such as its generative AI-focused global AI Assura...

Some might consider AI Verify's "building the plane as it flies" approach to AI governance to be rushed or risky; some might question the organization's deep collaboration with industry. But no matter what, it's hard to argue that Singapore's AI Verify project -- and its unique policy sandbox style model -- is influential and offers a real-world example of AI governance that is willing to test and...

In part three of World Privacy Forum's explainer series about C2PA, we'll talk trust. C2PA is not intended to directly determine the trustworthiness of content, but it does have a Trust Model and C2PA metadata are meant to be used as signals for measuring content trustworthiness. In this episode, you'll learn about the C2PA Trust Model process including the Conformance Program, Trust List, and why...

If you're looking for an accessible overview of how C2PA - aka Content Credentials - works technically and how it relates to privacy, identity, and trust, this is it! In our first episode in this explainer series about C2PA, we shared an overview of how C2PA works, and what it does in relation to privacy, identity, and trust. In this second episode, we dig deeper into Identity in C2PA. You'll lear...

If you're looking for an accessible overview of how C2PA works technically and how it relates to privacy, identity, and trust, this is it! Imagine a system that automatically generates detailed data showing where the digital images, videos and documents we encounter came from, who made them, how they have changed, who owns the rights to their use, and even whether AI was used in their creation. So...

We know from World Privacy Forum's 2023 report on AI governance tools, Risky Analysis , that these tools can have problems and should be assessed before they're deployed. But what do we learn about AI governance tools when they are actually put to use? This was the focus of recent research discussed in a paper by World Privacy Forum deputy director Kate Kaye. In this short episode of Privacy on th...

Will Tao knows first-hand how automated, algorithmic and machine learning systems used by Canada's government affect lives. The Founder of Heron Law Offices in Burnaby, British Columbia and co-founder of AIMICI (the AI Monitor for Immigration in Canada and Internationally) practices immigration, refugee and citizenship law in Canada. He has watched as these systems automatically determine or infor...

When governments create AI governance policy tools, how are they used in real-world situations? What does the process of assessing a machine learning model used by a government agency look like? In this episode of  Privacy on the Ground, you'll hear all about it from an insider: Mariana Germán, a researcher in the Ethical Algorithms Project at GobLab UAI, the public innovation laboratory at Chile'...

Inside Chile's Department of Social Security Superintendence — the country's social security and medical insurance agency — medical claims processors hold the livelihoods and future health of thousands of people in their hands. They are responsible for deciding whether or not the government should pay wages when workers are on medical leave or cover other expenses such as occupational mental healt...

There's no shortage of principles and policies for governing AI from governments and NGOs around the world. But how do they put those principles and policies into practice? It's that practical side of AI governance that has been a key focus of our work at World Privacy Forum for more than two years.   Rather than look only at government policies, in early 2023 we went layers deeper, looking at the...

Emotion recognition is baked into all sorts of software and systems many of us use or experience every day, from video call systems measuring the "mood" at a work meeting, to systems used to gauge distraction at school, or impairment or anger of drivers inside their cars. Despite its increasing proliferation, emotion recognition systems and the data use embedded in them create significant privacy...

In this episode of World Privacy Forum's Privacy on the Ground, Māori language expert and educator Te Mihinga Komene shares positive and problematic experiences working with tech companies to help build and correct Māori language translation and learning systems. Komene also discusses extractive data collection practices in AI, and why she hopes her scholarly research will help ensure the Māori la...

There are often disconnects between data protection policy and actual practice on the ground, especially when policy established on a regional or international level is intended to meet the needs of local communities. Eric Hardy is no stranger to this reality. In his role at the Labriola National American Indian Data Center, an Indigenous library at Arizona State University, Hardy is in the thick...

Turning what Alex Soto refers to as sometimes "lofty, grand" theoretical Indigenous Data Sovereignty principles and protocols into practice can be mundane, even tedious. It could require combing through hundreds of years-worth of paper documents, photos, oral histories of sensitive cultural knowledge in various formats, and other materials. It requires dedicated investments in time and money, and...

Dr Krystal Tsosie made what she calls a "hail mary" pass when she and colleagues pushed the genomic science research community to recognize that collection of genomic information from Indigenous peoples may not have offered much benefit to the Indigenous groups who contributed DNA -- and instead perpetuated stereotypes and other harms. Today, Dr. Tsosie is doing groundbreaking work in the field of...

Amy Juan sometimes tells a story about a little bean that grows on the Tohono O'odham Nation's San Xavier Co-op Farm called the Tepary bean. Juan is the admin manager of that farm, which is close to Tucson, Arizona. And, through her work with the International Indian Treaty Council, an indigenous peoples human rights organization, Juan has traveled the world as a knowledge holder in food and seed...

Every day it seems as though another little part of our lives is reflected in data. From the way we sleep to the way we order food, get a medical diagnoses, get a job -- even how our governments operate.   These interactions, decisions, and automations generate new data, combine it with existing data, share it, analyze it, and compute it. It all means that our earlier understandings of privacy and...