More than wor(l)ds : Can AI effectively monitor online harms?

Part 1 - Lead Organizer

Contact Person

Raashi Saxena

Organization / Affiliation (Please state "Individual" if appropriate)

The Sentinel Project

Designation

Global Project Coordinator - Hatebase

Gender

Female

Economy of Residence

India

Primary Stakeholder Group

Civil Society

Part 2 - Session Proposal

Your proposal is for

Main Conference (Day 1-3)

Session Title

More than wor(l)ds : Can AI effectively monitor online harms?

Track

Inclusion Trust

Session Format

Panel Discussion

Where do you plan to organize your session?

Virtual / online

Specific Issues for Discussion

Hate speech (HS) is a human problem, which will always require human engagement to teach machines its relevance. It's also a very context-dependent phenomenon, making it imperative for us to engage with experts across different regional and cultural contexts. How can we collaborate sustainably to keep pace with the constantly evolving nature of online HS? Can the monitoring of HS meaningfully support offline efforts to prevent violence and build societal cohesion? Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now widely used by platforms to find, categorize and remove harmful online content at scale. The hope is that AI systems will work robustly and efficiently to find hate speech and harassment and then take them down before they reach targeted individuals, communities and bystanders. However, in practice AI systems are beset with serious methodological, technical, and ethical challenges. In this session, we bring together human rights experts, practitioners who research and develop AI-based hate detection systems, in an effort to formulate a rights-respecting approach to tackling hate. Our hope is that bridging the gap between these communities will help to drive new initiatives and outlooks, ultimately leading to better and more responsible ways of tackling online abuse, balanced with protecting our freedom of expression.

Describe the Relevance of Your Session to APrIGF

Digital technologies have brought a myriad of benefits for society, transforming how people connect and communicate with each other. However, they have also enabled harmful and abusive behaviours to reach large audiences. The marginalised and vulnerable communities are often disproportionately at risk of receiving hate, compounding other social inequalities and injustices. This has created a huge risk, exacerbating social tensions and contributing to the division and breakdown of social bonds. Global tragedies demonstrate the potential for online hate to spill over into real-world violence. The main outcome is for participants to leave with a clear understanding of the complexities of online hate, the difficulties of defining, finding and challenging it, the limitations (but also potential) of AI to ‘solve’ this problem. We will address the risk of online harms and scrutinise the need for human rights to be actively integrated into how online spaces are governed, moderated and managed. This session has direct relevance at a time when thought leaders, politicians, regulators and policymakers are struggling with how to understand, monitor, and address the toxic effects of HS. We adopt a multi-stakeholder approach, reflecting the need for social and computational voices to be heard to develop feasible and effective solutions.

Methodology / Agenda

Rough agenda : Introduction: 5 minutes Part_1: Challenges of regulating hate speech using AI (25 minutes) 20 minutes Question 1: What are the key dimensions that social media firms should report on in order to ensure clearer communication of policies such as content guidelines and enforcement to users? Question 2: What should we do with online hate? Is the answer just to ban people? Question 3: What role, does AI have to play in tackling online hate? 5 minutes Q&A + activity Part_2: The ethical challenges and conflicts in Asia-Pacific (25 minutes) 20 minutes Question 1: Who should be responsible for the development and enforcement of policies to restrict hate speech and incitement to violence online, and how should these be applied? Question 2: How do we protect freedom of speech whilst still protecting from hate? Question 3 : How can we crowdsource hate speech lexicons for appropriate linguistic, cultural, and contextual knowledge? 7 minutes Q&A + activity Closing remarks: 2 minutes Remote participants will be able to pose questions to subject matter experts and other participants during the session through Slido. We will also use polls, shared documents and activity based tools such as Miro/Jam board to enhance participation.

Please provide 3 subject matter tags that best describe your session.

#MitigatingOnlineHate #OnlineHarms #ModeratingHateSpeech

Moderators & Speakers Info (Please complete where possible)