 Welcome to the rights con studio. I'm Melissa Chan and we're in conversation the next 30 minutes with Samantha power She is the administrator of the US agency for international development and from 2013 to 2017 she served in the Obama-Biden administration as the 28th US permanent representative to the United Nations She'll be in conversation with Anne-Marie Slaughter of New America she is CEO of New America and also former director of policy planning at the US State Department They will discuss how to build an inclusive and rights respecting digital future and Marie over to you Thank you rights con. It is an honor to be here with you and with this incredible global community It's also a pleasure and an honor to be in conversation with my friend My former colleague and my former student US USA IDs administrator Samantha power Samantha over to you Once a student Anne-Marie always a student. No, it's great to be here and It couldn't be a more a more timely conversation more important one Given the pace of technological innovation and penetration around the world So Yeah, I don't have to tell you that the challenges you're facing We're all facing are mounting by the day. We have war in Europe and in Africa growing inequality social fracturing in every conceivable way and declining trust in democratic institutions and processes It's also clear that digital technologies in the hands of unscrupulous And or simply uncaring creators and users are making those outcomes worse So of all the challenges that we face in the sort of intersecting Problem space, what do you see as the most urgent both in terms of of promise and of peril? Well, it's no secret that if we are to meet any of our development objectives globally Technology and the use of data and bringing in machine learning and AI I mean, all of these are going to be incredible assets whether in the realm of public health in the realm of climate forecasting And soil mapping which we're doing a lot of in light of the food security crisis So again the potential for positive impact of the use of these tools. I think knows no bounds But unfortunately, there's a lot of other things going on as well as you say in in the technology space the misappropriation of these tools to crack down on citizens who are exercising their rights Surveying those citizens and using information gathered through that surveillance Again to accelerate crackdowns as part of this democracy Recession, there's no question governments are getting savvy or doing that learning from one another in all the long ways Um, but also just in terms of what exists on platforms and we know this in the United States is that all along the kind of content propagation has outpaced potential for content mitigation um and What regardless of where you think various lines should be drawn in terms of The appropriateness of online conduct and there are a range of views. I know on that I think it'd be hard to look back, you know at the last 10 years and say that It's been intentionality that has dictated, you know, where those lines are drawn, right? It's it's much, you know, if in a social media platform sets up in a developing country like Myanmar Or even a more advanced country like Sri Lanka Chances are You know, it's going to be a little bit of a free for all in the first instance and you're not going to have people even In sufficiently staffing those operations to even be able to Take 911 phone calls, right? And and and to hear the sirens if they're issued whether around incitement to violence or again other kinds of online conduct that that One would really want to be vigilant about so I think we're at a moment. That's by the conversation I'm so grateful to you for for facilitating it and for your leadership In this domain as well and for that of everybody who's watching but thinking through, you know, what what does the rules of the road look like That can prevent misuse and abuse. What is us aides and and other development? Donors what is our comparative advantage to be involved in those conversations? We're a government, you know these Any kind of code of conduct? You know needs to be developed by the people who Use these platforms who develop these platforms were involved in governance in The countries in question in in the countries in which us aid works But you know thinking about how we guard against misuse in a much more proactive way than we are right now and by the we I mean the royal we as a community of humanity and How can we be more intentional? Given that so much of this outpaced That intentionality about the values that we are embedding In the development and the design of technologies algorithms of all kinds, you know can have Very profound human consequences And often human costs and so that kind of intentionality is something we really need in great haste uh to to to uh to embed, you know again in in design In governance in participation, and I think that's uh an inflection point that we're at right now that we cannot afford to miss You you make a number number of key points. I think the the Point that propagation outruns mitigation and that of course there are Countless unintended consequences in some cases with negligence maybe in some cases With mal intent, but that the the overall runs so fast and is so complicated And that's been true of all technology. It's all new technologies, right? There's huge promise and there's peril But at this point we have to come together to think through What a rights respecting common digital future looks like So can you talk a little bit more about how you see that process? Because usa id has really been pushing that process in the context of the summit for democracies Absolutely. So so president biden convene that summit very much growing out of his personal commitment and his recognition about how So many of the harms That occur on or are abetted or accelerated by Technology or ones that we we see in this country and we see happening around the world When you know many of the private sector actors are actually based here in the united states giving us I think a special responsibility to look at this so In the context of this on the democracy we have launched something called the advancing digital democracy program and this is again one pillar of The presidential initiative for democratic renewal. So it's not the only aspect of that There's much to be said about anti-corruption work and election infrastructure security and the like But here, you know really thinking about what a safe inclusive rights regarding digital ecosystem can look like and What we're doing is we are inviting the donor community. So donors from all around the world the private sector of course civil society advocates digital rights activists academics philanthropies and foundations and the like to join us here and The idea is To embed democratic values and respect for human rights Across the countries in which we are working's entire digital ecosystems And and that is to build resilience to digital authoritarianism that might not yet have taken root But it's always out there lurking To think through again how those stakeholders can come together to try to Roll back the rollback you might say or or slide forward after the backsliding in this space And that's you know the toolkit that you know well from from your time trying to bring the development and diplomatic tools together as part of the obama administration But there's diplomacy involved in this there's You know, certainly we would hope that congress Would be part of this effort by actually putting in place the kind of legal and regulatory reform That can help on the domestic front. So to be clear We at us aid again can't dictate that But president biden's very clear on on what his ambitions are and aspirations are in that space because What we do here, you know absolutely has to be coupled with that kind of legal and regulatory reform But right now we're going to pilot this So-called ad approach against advancing digital democracy in the country of Serbia And we're going to research and are in the process of figuring out what other digital environments lend themselves To bringing again all of these stakeholders Together if you are interested In joining us in this idea of advancing digital democracy in in all of its facets Uh, you can contribute funds or in-kind services to programming You could do whatever you are already doing and we can talk about how to align what you are doing You know under this umbrella perhaps or or you can stay under your own umbrella But like let's actually figure out how How to coordinate and on the rights con event page. I think you'll see You know more details on that but but again the idea is You know taking stock of where we are where the setbacks have been And working with countries we have entrée through our 80 missions around the world At usa and of course our ambassadors and our whole country teams As well as our catalytic convening power With the private sector, I hope but also again with with other donors And so I think there's a real chance to try to kind of refresh What exactly the approach is that Citizens and civil society and even government officials would wish to take Were they not so far down the road that they are on right now? You know, how do you kind of hit the pause button? Take stock and actually then try to embed the kinds of values that do seem to be not central To to how digital ecosystems are necessarily thought about right now in many parts of the world You're actually talking about a democratic process for figuring out a democratic digital future I know but the messiness of it and the and the horizontality of it, right? It's extraordinary to me. I mean you're there. You are the administrator of a large government bureaucracy, but you're effectively Inviting all the different stakeholders into a much more horizontal process a collective process And one as you say that there there are many different ways people can contribute I wanted to to push a little further on On what that will take in terms of culture change and you and I have both done this from government We've both done this in academia. You can you know, you can launch a new initiative You can hand out a new set of ideas But ultimately you're only going to get changed with culture change and with your long work in human rights Establishing a culture of human rights in american diplomacy and and more globally took decades So how do we how do we create new norms around this kind of process? In the digital space at new america We talk about people centered policy putting people at the center of policy But that means actually not just putting them at the center like you're the problem Rather, it's it's the solutions that the people closest to the problem come up with and that's a You know a culture shift that the communities that here at rights con the activists the movement leaders the policy advocates academics civil society And really media are craving that kind of of culture shifts So I wondered if you talk a little bit more about how usa sees that happen well, I think um first of all, this is uh A question that we need to crowdsource continue to crowdsource. I think this initiative really has come out of these kinds of conversations But famously as you know, well emory in in behavioral science Uh, you know when you tell someone to eat healthier They can't because it's not at all prescriptive if you tell somebody to drink 2 milk instead of whole milk That that one can do there's you know great adherence to that Similarly, I always say this to my team like when we say we've got to change the culture right like That's like eat healthier. You know, what what does that mean? What what is the action item for me? So uh again, I don't pretend to have the answers here, but I am I keep coming back to this idea of intentionality, you know, if you look at The generations of engineers and computer scientists that were sent out into the world Um, you know, I haven't done a survey. I'm sure someone has uh, again, this is not my specialty, but I would suspect that the amount of curriculum attention dedicated to questions of ethics or Human rights norms or the potential ulterior effects Was quite modest next to the rich array of more technical capabilities that that students Were able to get access to through their You know undergraduate or their graduate schooling We we've set up a partnership with the mozilla foundation to expand What it calls its responsible computer science challenge, which is about building curricula That integrate ethics within computer science training And trying to educate a new wave of engineers and our friend jeremy winstein Uh, who's a professor at stanford, uh, you know has been doing such important work out there embedding again, uh with his colleagues in the computer science department this kind of merger Of consideration of tech along with consideration of tech consequences And I think I think the more that that you know, again, my domain is not domestic here in the united states, but Fundamentally, this is going to have to happen in the united states Uh, you know, and and and the kinds of things that are happening at places like stanford have have to be happening across the board including Kids who are younger than university students and and part of it is also You know demand driven, you know, do the tech companies are they hearing from Those who are using their platforms that this matters the values matter And I think we've seen more of that kind of accountability public accountability But perhaps not yet the kind of groundswell, uh that would get generated in and of itself, uh, you know sufficient Uh change or traction I'm really excited about what we're doing together enmarie. Um So us aid and new america to try to now Kick off a multi stakeholder effort to develop, uh technologist code of ethics I'm the daughter of uh a mother who's a physician and this is inspired by the hippocratic oath, uh in medicine And that's again, it's 2022. I don't know how this kind of, uh, you know initiative hasn't sort of culminated yet But the purposes of this kind of code would be To support technologists the civil society actors and the academics to come together to document a set of principles For how technology should uphold democratic values and human rights And then back to the curriculum point to imbue In in principle every up and coming technologists with some sworn commitment to these ideals So that intentionality and that embrace of those principles takes holds, you know As someone goes forth into the world to do their work And then to operationalize these ideals in the spaces where technologists work and learn so they'll be universities But also the companies themselves And I guess what I will say is we're the government as I said earlier You know, this is not about the u.s. Government, uh, you know drafting something of this ambition and of this normative nature But you know, we and you together we can try to facilitate the creation of spaces whereby The true stakeholders, you know to these platforms come together and Facilitate a transparent collaborative inclusive process try to bring as much diversity into the room as possible It is going to be chaotic. I think it's it's fair to say but as Two veterans here of multilateral negotiations in the international space Um, a lot of the things we now count on as as global norms and really global goods have come about Through processes of the of that nature, but usually they're very statist And they haven't included The array of people who stand most to benefit but also most to lose From not having these values embedded Um, so there's going to be just to preview the rights con panel On a technologist code of ethics and that's right after this conversation and they're going to Gather thoughts. I think on the code um from rights con attendees and and again we We stand ready and I you can speak for for new america, but um, we're just very excited not to draft the code uh, but to use our convening power um in order to bring people together because You know, we're already way late on this given how far Things have evolved in so many countries around the world including our own You know, it really is extraordinary that there is not a technologist code of ethics I mean you were talking about the Hippocratic oath, but you and I were both lawyers And we also all had to take legal profession and there is obviously a legal code of ethics and Part of what we're we're doing together and new america has been doing for almost a decade Is to build an entire field of public interest technology So jeremy winestein and the stanford impact lab have been leaders in the public interest technology university network So that somebody who wants to be a technologist can think about You know being a technologist at usa id or in their local community, you know making traffic better or Housing better so that we we have a public interest track for technologists and a code of ethics for all technologists Just as you would for other professions It's harder because technologist is not as defined as lawyer or doctor on the other hand There are an awful lot of people who are designers or engineers who would describe themselves That way and so to be to be Facilitating the co-creation of this technologist code of ethics because I think that's really That kind of describes how we're going to work together At new america our digital impact and governance initiative will be working directly With usaid, but also, you know our open technology institute and ranking digital rights program Which are sort of approach these issues from other perspectives will be engaged as well So I would also encourage everybody to to participate on that panel I wanted to ask you though how you see specifically the role of the private sector because this is You know the private sector is vital here in some ways certainly there are big massive private companies who are part of the problem, but they also have to be part of the solution So I'd love for you to talk about how you see their role Well, let me let me just share A little bit of an oblique anecdote You know even in this in this domain I I came from traveling to the ukrainian border not long ago and was in a couple of frontline countries that are sheltering ukrainian refugees and the amount of Misinformation The amount of you know, if not outright incitement borderline incitement um the amount of lies You know relevant to everything from covid vaccines to climate change and again, we're very familiar with that misinformation here um But putting all of that to one side the Insufficiency among certain private sector actors of infrastructure. It's what I alluded to at the beginning was I was talking about Myanmar and Sri Lanka This is Europe And not having people who spoke the language who could do You know that kind of content Uh oversight right that that would be needed whether through You know algorithms or with with human judgment, uh, you know attached in real time I mean just from talking to the heads of state of countries from talking to civil society that infrastructure Uh was let's just put it this way woefully insufficient. It existed. There was something there It had been built up a little bit but nowhere near Uh an ability to keep pace with what was actually out of information on the platform Anyway, so I came back and I reached out to the company that should go should go nameless at a very senior level and what was remarkable emory is is the extent to which Their understanding of what the content oversight look like in these two european countries how just radically that departed From the government's understanding from the civil society Actors understanding who actually worked In the area like you do at new america of actually looking at tech and governance and so forth and You know, I wasn't even I can't say that the impression that I got was 100 right or but what I know is That the the canyon that separated The company's understanding of what was actually in place and what they were doing and and what at least Pretty relevant citizens like the president of the country understood were just radically different and so It just gets to it's a government that happens a lot right like inputs versus outcomes. We always have to Are we talking about how many trainings we had or are we talking about anything being, you know, kind of different in the world And and this was like that. It was it was that and so Just to say that more interaction. I mean really one can just make a kind of boring process point out of this Uh, you know, there's a critique implicit in it, of course, but but the boring process point is like those those uh gaps of Understanding that that that ability to kind of hold a mirror up to what certain private sector actors think that they Are doing and I may sound naive Because I know there's some who just say oh no, they know they're not doing anything but you know regardless we need to test the proposition And that accountability is absolutely critical. So so thinking at usa admissions how we Are taking advantage of the context that we have I mean you have heads of states of countries who wouldn't know Who to call at the big social media companies, right? And here we are, you know, uh, the largest development humanitarian agency in the world Like we should use Our contacts in order to be able to channel the concerns that that come come out of developing countries in particular Where the decisions made so far away from where the harms Could happen, you know are just seem like they're they're being made on mars You know that they're completely out of reach. So that's one aspect on the code itself I think we want to encourage active participation In developing this tech code of ethics again, you've been at this emory for A long while at at new america, you know, really kind of ahead of the curve. I think on on some of this thinking Um, and then, you know, once the code of conduct is developed Messy though that process will be and we have norms Then it's incumbent on the the rest of us to do everything we can to enlist the private sector to embrace those norms For entry-level officials and for people who've been operating Without at least formalized norms for quite some time So that is the end of our time and just the right note To end on and I just want to wrap it up in the sense of you've heard us aides advancing digital democracy initiative announced at the summit for democracy and now specifically inviting Everyone at this conference, but more broadly all the different members of the digital ecosystem To participate in thinking through the kinds of guardrails and norms Dorms that have to be inclusive And transparent and democratic And they have to advance a rights respecting digital future So we're inviting you to participate and more specifically on a technologist code of ethics Which is one piece of that larger ecosystem Of building what truly has to be a democratic digital future So administrator power such a pleasure to be able to be in this conversation with you and thanks so much No, thanks. Thank you. Ann Marie and I come back to something our former boss President obama Like to say back when we were in government together, which is when you're faced with something like this that it's can just be Very overwhelming Um, uh, you know, he would sometimes and I'd say let's solve the whole problem at once and and be, you know Super ambitious and and this is really unwieldy and there's so many stakeholders involved But he'd like to say better is good Uh, and I always just I just love that expression, right? And he would say and it turns out, you know better is often a hell of a lot harder than worse So, you know, this is not a panacea, right? There's so much that we at us aid and and and all of us who care about the risk to democracy and human rights around the world In the digital space that we need to work on underlying infrastructure or how that infrastructure is adopted The digital services and platforms that operate on the infrastructure and the governance, right? Both at the companies and in the countries in question And there's so many stakeholders, you know, there's a lot here and I it may sound to some who are Pretty frustrated the pace of change and reform, you know, that this is just taking one slice and But better is good and and the you know To not have norms to not have that intention out I think we know where that path has taken us and that's you know, arguably been at least one contributor that absence Of the injection of ethics and a discussion of human rights and outcomes You know across the board so really excited to go forward and thrilled to got to have this conversation with you and Marie And thanks to to everybody who's hosting and everybody who's out there in the audience. We need you Very very badly. So so thank you for all you do every day and back to you, melissa And that's it. Thanks for joining us and as always stay engaged