How are you everyone good to see you many of you again for? the 2024 Sidge symposium. This is the Northern California. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior Community Foundations inaugural event For our Center for Social Impact Development and Global Engagement at the North Cal MLK Foundation My name is Aaron Grisel. I'm the executive director of the Northern California. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior Community Foundation We were founded by the late Coretta Scott King who? after the legislation passed on November 2nd 2019 1983 Spent three years going around the country starting organizations to help Manage the regional celebrations to bring salience to this new national holiday. She came to San Francisco in 1985 and engage our own Cecil Williams at Glide Church to help to manage that and after Cecil's retirement in 2010 he asked me to take a Hand in being the to head this Organization going forward which we have our honor to do this particular program is a part of our Question that we've had at the foundation about the area of ethics in new technologies and We have a host of Thinkers from around the country and also here locally who are interested in understanding the question of ethics in New technologies and for us that means ethics primarily in artificial intelligence and ethics in the area of Predictive models and all of that and so a lot of our our faith leaders a lot of our Scholars and theologians I continue to tell everybody that you know we have at the foundation here We have ethics coming out of our ears. I mean Martin Luther King, you know, Howard Thurman You know Paulie Murray, you know, we are all of these ethics, but how how can we how can we better participate? In this space of new technologies in these predictive models and artificial intelligence and algorithmic Equations that drive these instruction sets that go into these predictive models. How can we find a way to? Lend our hand to the effort of rebalancing a lot of these inequities that are in Almost like they're built into these equations. How do we deal with that? We haven't heard too much about King's thought and Howard Thurman's thought the the Almost like the progenitor of King one of the King's mentors their thoughts Have really connected with the technological area and the technology and technologies in a new way And that's what we think we can help in and these efforts here are what are going to enable us to do that Now I'd like to introduce to you our morning panel on technology and climate impact with Amali Tower Maria Sousa Carlton waterhouse and Theodora dryer to be moderated by our own of Fua Bruce. Let's welcome them Good morning. I think we'll we'll wake up together. It sounds But I'm so glad to be here and so excited for this. I think it's a really important conversation We're here today to talk about technology and climate Both of these things have dominated headlines over the past several years Technology often being portrayed as something that will save us all but also sometimes being portrayed as the thing That will kill us all And climate of course is often mentioned as something that's a problem Really spinning out of control these days So how should we make sense of these topics both separately and together? What's the impact of technology on climate? How does climate inform what type of technology we build how we deploy it? The field of public interest technology really allows us to examine both the technical and non-technical aspects of The biggest problems-facing society really centering justice as we design long-term solutions Public interest tech pit for short Allows us to really take an interdisciplinary approach to solve today's biggest challenges Which are bigger than any single discipline any single person any single entity and the single sector And come up with solutions for the future. So today I am excited to have To be joined by four experts again modeling this interdisciplinary idea We have an engineer a historian a humanitarian and a lawyer who'll be participating in this Conversation today as we examine how technology and climate intersect how we And what we should be excited about what we should be worried about and what we still need to figure out So Molly Tower Dr. Carlton waterhouse Dr. Theodora Dreyer Dr. Maria Jal Sousa Welcome and thank you for joining us for this important conversation today Let's go ahead and jump in and I'll pose a question to each of the panelists to allow them to introduce themselves and Allow you to get to know them a little bit better So I'm all a tower you are the founder and executive director of climate refugees and given your experience with Refugees who have fled due to climate change what questions should communities and technologists be asking about how to incorporate Technology into tools and solutions for climate refugees Thank you. I Is this on I think it is yeah So I'm really happy to be here with you all and as you heard a food say I I am a humanitarian I come from human rights international law Background and I'm very much a practitioner and I come to the work now of climate displacement through you could say on the experience of working 20 plus years with with displaced people all around the world and There's a couple of things that you learn No, there's a lot. I've learned mostly humility from from displaced folks Who epitomized resilience and are afforded almost no dignity? So when we talk about technology and when we talk about technology affording solutions I Get a little bit concerned about For whom you know, are they included do I don't know a lot of displaced people who have access to technology There I haven't met a refugee who doesn't have a mobile phone these days Do they have the data to use it not really? So when we want to talk about how do we find solutions for the hundred and fourteen million people that are displaced today in the world 60% of whom are coming from the most vulnerable countries to climate change About 70% of refugees in the world today are coming from the global south where climate change is Disproportionately affecting people who have had almost zero contribution to global warming and continue to do that The global north Shores up its borders to ensure that people do not come to its countries and they use technology surveillance drones Facial recognition Biometrics iris scanning you name it and that and that's the stuff we know about what about all the intelligence things We don't know about These are the tools that create Digital walls if you will of Do people have the access to protection to enabling and ensuring that the rights Both internationally and nationally that are sacrosanct that apply at all times Do they get to be applied not really because we tend to approach of solutions as far as far as migrants go through a border security narrative than a human security narrative, so It runs the gamut Access for me is do they have access to the technology that could feed better solutions that actually provide dignity Protection and rights and the answer largely tends to be no Are they included in the decision-making and the solutions not really? You know the UN are using AI now and predictive analytics to determine where are there going to be Disasters that we can like help move people out of the way from or help them Mitigate or build resilience to a drought That's great But giving someone a cash transfer Who might be a farmer who no longer can farm in a drought Doesn't actually answer the issue of the injustice of a farmer who contributed nothing towards climate change now Losing his entire livelihood For something he has played no role in creating a cash transfer of Go ahead and stay in your poverty doesn't address that so AI and predictive analytics to help move people out of ways great does it ensure justice? No You Said a lot there that I'm excited to to dive in so much. I think one of the things you mentioned though That's already really sticking with me is this idea of resiliency and dignity and often when we talk about tech systems We talk about building and resiliency. Yep, but what does it mean to build in dignity and for whom? Yeah, Dr. Carlton waterhouse You are a professor of law at Howard University and an international expert on Environmental law and environmental justice You have worked on climate and technology issues both within government at the EPA and with communities as An environmental justice lawyer What skills and knowledge related to technology and climate do community organizations need to develop? To ensure that government is meeting their needs if you could solve all of that for us in a couple of minutes Yeah, thank you so much for that question and for the opportunity to be here I Guess I'll say my perspective on this is partially as a lawyer But before I was went to law school I was actually studying engineering and I was very much interested in the humanity side of engineering science technology and society and the ethics of Using our engineering and science and technology in a way that produces good for people And so that actually is what brought me into environmental law because I saw environmental law Largely growing out of how we use technology in a way that actually causes harm to people and how can we then now? reframe that to provide instead good for people so I Think when I think about technology I don't think about technology is something that's new and I think often when we think of technology we think of oh We have technology now, but they didn't have technology It's like fires technology right the ability to produce fires of big technology wheels are technology That's a huge thing roads big technology all of these inventions all of these developments all of these new techniques are transformative were transformative in the spaces and places where they were and So one of the keys for us to be able to I think answer the question has to do with our willingness to go back and look historically Right if we want to see how does technology justly get used we need to look at how it has historically been used Who are the winners who are the losers what produces a greater what produced greater winners? What caused more losers? I think we have to be willing to acknowledge that we are just the latest not necessarily the most significant even Right penicillin for example, right? And so I think for us we have to take an ethical lens that centers the most vulnerable Populations and that makes sure that the vulnerable populations are those that are going to be protected and good from the way the technology Uses and when the most vulnerable populations are going to be good and protected everybody else is going to be fine So I think that's the lens that I would say we begin with. Mm-hmm I love that you saw me taking notes as you were talking and I think one of the things that really stuck to me is Stuck with me as technology is not new We've had technologies before we've had significant transformations before and what lessons can we learn from the past? How do we take a look at history to inform the decisions? We make about what technologies we developed now and what their impacts are to your point on the environment And I'm hoping our resident historian on the panel can help us with this idea How to look back at history Dr. Theodora Dreyer, you're the director of the water justice and technology project As well as co-founder of the critical carbon computing collective Can you elaborate on the findings of your water justice and technology reports, especially? talking about the roles of algorithms and managing Natural resources and really I know you touch on policy as well in your work You do quite a bit with policy as well So can you talk to us a bit about the policy challenges specific to the water domain? Yes Thank you so much and thank you for that introduction and your remarks about historical analysis so I'm a critical policy analyst and I focus on technology and data histories of algorithmic computing artificial intelligence and predictive analytics as they relate to environmental justice and climate change and I do feel that my superpower is my historical training and research I believe that environmental justice is an engagement with historical archives definitely legal archives and policy archives and I think by looking at the stratifications of the power dynamics we're talking about today We learn a lot and we acknowledge the past And we start looking at intergenerational trauma and we start having real Conversations about it instead of you know going into systems that are premised on its erasure So I really appreciate those remarks and also in your opening remarks I do believe that the questions and the power dynamics that we're talking about today require collective action they require interdisciplinary engagement the sort of paradigm of the Expert individual who published that one book that solves everything is not the answer These are really complex historical problems that we're coming into Together today, and I'm grateful to be on this panel and to be here in person Being able to make eye contact. Well, you can see me more than I can see you But you know sharing energy and having these conversations I'm the director of the water justice and technology project. It's water justice minus tech org and I wanted to share it is a creative studio and critical research platform and directive that brings together activists scholar activists like myself scientists engineers Artists filmmakers to really critically engage how technology is used against water but also to create possibilities for Different kinds of water futures and to engage these questions And I would say two of our key methodological findings is first to put key policy terms to question So we don't want to naturalize these terms So I'm talking about terms like relief and crisis and we first came together during the COVID-19 crisis during quarantine To talk about COVID-19 and talk about water policy and COVID-19 and how terms like crisis and relief that These are not new terms. These are old terms that have been used by different powers settler colonial powers Imperial powers to perpetuate violence against water and violence against people and we said like what if we put those To question and what of those became a note of inquiry for us to reflect on together And so water is super important It's a precious natural resource 2% of the earth's water or fresh water only 2% it's historically been a site of contest And there for me are two rough paradigms about water the first I think undergirds big tech expansionism, and it's this idea that water is a commodity That's been abstracted from live context. It's a commodity that is subject to commodification and financialization And if you think about that that's super violent To commodify it like the most essential resource on this planet the other paradigm is also called reality And that's water is a natural resource and it's an ecology It's precious. It's been protected by indigenous water protectors Water and land stewardship It's it's a source of life so that's the other paradigm and Oftentimes water is used as the site of control and violence and this is true in the US indigenous Southwest where I do a lot of research It's true in the occupied Palestinian territories and it's true in Congo. So part of the water project is With our critique we have this modality of imagination what are called water stories So we actually have a lot of very short form water stories on our website that are place-based and specific and that kind of Defy the abstraction of water and talk about water and technology and different localities around the world and that allows us to have really powerful conversations about water and start building bridges and Creating different points of it methodological intervention. So I'll stop there for now Thank you so much for that. I think how you started Pointing out that environmental justice is an engagement with historical archives. I think is especially Really resonant point for where we are today and this weekend as we celebrate the history of an impact of Martin Luther King about a lot of the work that we do for Justice requires an engagement with historical archives and so excited to have this conversation about how technology Interplays with that and climate today. You also mentioned sort of the ethics and motives around Using the terms crisis and relief and so how do ethics play how Demotives play how do politics play in that decision? And those decisions around those definitions around those terms and I know Dr. Maria Jal Sousa who is the executive director at climate change AI Which is incubated at Cornell Tech's public interest technology initiative. You deal a lot with ethics and your work And so as someone at the intersection of climate change and machine learning What are some of the innovative ways machine learning is being used to combat? Climate issues and what are some of the ethical considerations that should be kept in mind? Yeah, thank you so much for for the introduction and the question at climate change AI we are a non-profit startup that empowers global community of innovators practitioners and decision makers to accelerate the Responsible use of AI in service of climate action. So we do a lot of these work at looking at what ways AI and machine learning could be used in Responsible and impactful ways for climate change areas from power and energy systems or a culture by diversity transportation buildings cities Climate extremes all the the the ways that We need to tackle climate change essentially and there are many many ways like in 2019 climate change AI released Comprehensive report of the many ways that AI could impact fully be used For climate action. I won't like name all of the innovative ways in that 60 page report here, but I would want to anchor our discussion here maybe on on three major Areas that are very relevant. So in the space of climate change mitigation for instance All we are going to reduce the the carbon emissions. So in that space AI can be very useful to accelerate the penetration of renewable energy into the power grid So helping us forecast better the demand for energy help us better forecast plan the energy production as well with the volatility of volatility of the availability of Renewable energy as well So there is a lot of potential there. There is a lot of Areas then also on climate change adaptation to enable us to better predict Droughts floods wildfires all these Phenomena that are becoming more frequent and more extreme because of the effects of climate change And also how to better improve preparedness for for these phenomena as well I want to also make a parallel here cross-cutting because it's all almost always like not just a Matter of predicting one of these phenomena, but all these Intersects with a bunch of other areas often Drought phenomena or flooding phenomena is very tied to agriculture and food security and Climate migration. So they all these issues are very interconnected and need to be looked elistically as well and then other areas That's a machine learning as effectively we've been very useful in the last few years is to improve a lot climate predictions and climate modeling it has been one of the fast-growing fields where AI has been used and then also in the policy space with large corpus of data becoming available and Machine learning also becoming better at processing these large amounts of data There's a lot of potential, but it's more a emergent field in a sense A lot of the ethical issues That we deal with is looking at AI and I described a bunch of ways that the AI can be effectively used to Power climate action, but at the same time AI is a general purpose tool So it can also be used and it is being used to accelerate Fields and sectors that accelerate emissions at the same time. So When you use you look at the AI applications, we need to really Understand that it can be used for good. It can be used for bad and We need to scope out what are the the byproducts and the effects of of these technologies Then there are other applications where the outcomes are a bit uncertain And the system level impacts our earlier to scope for instance if we Look at the development of electrical vehicles in theory like we are the decarbonizing that way But at the same time that can create the incentives that People have more EVs that consume more natural resources and also continue to incentivize the the Individual vehicle in detriment of the use of public transportation So those more complex scenarios are harder to scope from a technological perspective as well And then there are the bad effects or the inherent effects of AI also consuming a lot of energy consuming a lot of water and The hardware required to power all these systems as well. So this needs to be Also accounted for the impacts of developing these technologies need to be transparently reported and it's something that we advocate very much for Thanks so much and we'll certainly get into some of the environmental impacts of technology you Maria also Mentioned how these issues Predicting in one area is an alone is one area alone isn't enough these issues are Interrelated and one thing affects another we really need to look Holistically and I know everyone sitting here on the panel has had Hands-on experience with trying to do that and trying to make things work in and with partnerships with communities As we've talked about big challenges require big solutions including working together in new ways with new partnerships And so I'm curious and maybe we'll start with you Amali In your view, what are the most significant barriers to implementing cross sector partnerships? In climate technology and how can these be overcome? Yeah, okay, so You know kind of building on what I said in my in the other question I think I think if you think about what I some of the things I mentioned to me the the meta question is who's getting left behind with all this sort of apparent technology and information That doesn't necessarily translate to knowledge and therefore, you know Specific solutions for specific problems in specific regions because it's not a one Size fits all right so And I totally agree with with what Carlton said about So, you know being a humanitarian You're often also in the development space and and now that I'm you know looking at things through Well, how is climate a risk to marginalized oppressed people? It's become so Apparent to me and in international affairs one of the biggest problems as a sort of like a meta way we organize is is everything siloed so you go into a crisis and Humanitarians are there and then it's like there's this sort of oh light bulbs on your job is done We're now transitioning into development Economic development political development nation building education build roads build schools and now that I'm going into all these places That are grossly underdeveloped supposedly we've made all these gains Really gains for whom and by whom? You know where the climate Crisis is actually eroding development gains once made So I'll give you a couple of examples then of of what that looks like But to me, you know, it's become really clear like hmm Is this a lack of development or is this also how technology could be playing a role to work with development? And is that not also the same thing? Development actors would not consider themselves to be technologists right there like I'm here trying to build out Education on a national level and roll that out. You mean to tell me technology doesn't play a role in that today But there's that silo problem So, you know as a humanitarian there are these like expressions We have like if you want to educate a country start by providing pencils You know you need to kind of come and look at these things in this situation in context in which they're happening Because technology is great, but it looks also like building roads That's one point the second point not everyone has access to all these so-called solutions. I mentioned the data I mentioned, you know, do you have internet if you don't have a road? Where how do you have the the fiber optics to build, you know internet? And this this looks kind of similar in a variety of places Miami where I was last year doing some work in Little Haiti And I think you're gonna hear from a panelist tomorrow. I was also done some pitcases there Little Haiti is the highest elevation point in Miami If if Miami were a country would be the fourth most at risk to see level rise So guess what the uber rich are moving inland and upward It's leading to displacement what Many long before Harvard coined it is called climate gentrification if you speak to black folks in Miami They'll go we've been using that term a while and What's happening is you go to little Haiti resettled Haitian refugees by the way is how this community comes about and There's a massive also problem with heat which most people don't talk about because we talk about the sea level rise And when you look at the heat index and the lack of material, you know, sort of ways to solve this problem how we actually Know what the heat is the real heat the urban heat index isn't even in little Haiti It's actually somewhere over by the airport So you can't even actually so where's the data coming from is it accurate second issue? Is it nuanced? I was also in Kenya last year and Kenya is By the 54 nations in Africa Kenya is is is a is a leader Right is a leader at every geopolitical level you can think about and partner to global North countries Kenya is Devastated by climate change.  They don't have water People are dying because they're built digging waterholes and they're having to go so deep That it's collapsing on them and children have died children are forgoing school Roads water that's technology that though exists in the world of development. So Then you know, I talked about representation and inclusion if we're gonna use AI to figure out, you know What solutions are we also now at COP past that the climate talks this year or last year now past This new fund for justice really called loss and damage There's a nuanced conversation happening It's not just a disaster and a rising seas and a hurricane that's gonna displace someone for a short period of time No, there's permanent losses Irreversible losses those need to need compensation aka reparations Technology can play a role how you have to speak to people to understand. What is the nuanced loss of climate change? You're not gonna get that through AI and predictive analytics that said Here get out of harm's way And I think you bring up this really good point you're underscoring I think something dr. Waterhouse mentioned is that technology isn't new right technology. There are many different types of technology Hey, I is the technology of the moment But there are other technologies right that we need to keep in mind and as we think about in your case development What role what opportunity does technology have to play in those to especially? Tied to I think you also mentioned data should be accurate and nuanced I'm curious if any of the other panelists want to weigh on on this question of how do we think about working in cross-sector partnerships And what barriers we have and how do we overcome them? Yeah, maybe I can jump in yeah, yeah often the issue with creating these cross sectoral collaborations comes from different incentives being placed at different stakeholders and In a lot of times it is important to bring those stakeholders together even in the project scoping so that the pathway to Deployment and the pathway to impact is there Often we see a lot of incentives for instance if we think in the research space a lot of the incentives are put into place like the grants are The grant calls are for scientists to work with other scientists But not to working with other organizations outside the scientific ecosystem. So a lot of these incentives need to be shaped so that not just the several types of stakeholders and nonprofits the Corporations the governmental entities that will be served by these Applications that eventually permeate society are included But also the end users the communities how they are being brought together into shaping the The innovations and the development of projects Yeah, absolutely, I think that point Marie about really aligning the incentives and are we incentivizing Scientists or engineers to work with other scientists and engineers are actually to work in the communities that are being served or not Served and I think I'm all I did something you mentioned earlier. This is all done tech for home and the benefit for home Did anyone else want to weigh in on This particular question. I know Dr. Waterhouse. You've done a lot of work directly with communities in different capacities as well I Won't weigh in on that question, but I will weigh in on another question. Okay. You were ready. Well in that case I'm You you can't escape my questions, so we'll go to you for my for my next question. Anyway, Dr. Waterhouse So can you you talk to us a little bit about how do you envision the future climate technology in terms of its ability to? Equitably and effectively address the needs of frontline communities and how do we actually Help stakeholders to move forward towards this vision. I'll ask the other panelists afterwards, but Can you talk to us about how do we? Make sure that we're using climate technology to really effectively address the needs of frontline communities Okay, great. So I'm gonna start with use technology and then get to climate technology. Absolutely. So more broadly You know what we need is Folks who can fill a gap? Between what we get from our governmental services and what communities needs are and There is a space of idealism by which we define everything in black and white terms So the government fails to meet a need. It's because the government doesn't care It's because the government has overlooked them because the government has neglected them There isn't the nuance recognition That's because the government operates based on laws the government has to work with the resources that was given the government Has to work with the finances and the budget the government has to work with the tools and technologies they have available So even when you have the people in the position in the government who are heartfelt committed work 12 hours Every day and this is their life's work. They're still a failure If that failure is read through an idealistic lens of the government doesn't want to do this The government doesn't care for you the government is out to only represent x y and z that got never gets addressed When there's recognition that there are actually allies in the government who are working all the time to try to help this and that and other Communities that are in need then there's ability to reach across that gap and this is what we need to happen for communities We need community leaders who can bring the technological expertise to resolving policy questions and problems that government Leaders face in trying to adjust problems when corporations come into the government They don't talk to them about ideals. They talk to them about numbers They say your responsibility is to achieve environmental protection under the clean water act We think that's accomplished through having a permit limit That's at ten to the minus six or ten to the minus fifth in the level of this particular contaminant Community members come in and talk to the government and say protect us keep us safe The government official has to decide is that ten to the minus fifth is that ten to the minus six? What is that the community members don't chime in? They don't produce data to say this is the level that we're experiencing and therefore we can't have anything about this That's where we need people to come in people who have technical information that allows them to advocate with the government Officials and to help inform them on what the right decisions are now We have some of that in the level of the big green organizations in the environmental context But we lack that very much at the community based Organization level and we need the community based organization levels to have those conversations with the folks in the big greens And we need them to also have those conversations with the leaders in the state government and the leaders in the federal government Leaders in local government So there's a huge gap where technology and people who can use technology to represent the needs of communities is essential and that also applies to calm climate particularly though our focus is often on Mitigation we need that primarily in that adaptation Resilient sustainability space. Where is the heat island effect going to be? Where is it that the flooding is going to take place? Whose basement is going to have what particular flooding happened? this is where we need technology and communities to be able to inform and Direct and guide government officials on how to protect them not just to say protect us Yeah, I think that's incredibly well said is the desire of communities for of government is to be protected And so how can we help get the right technical information to really advocate with? In partnership with community-based organizations Theo, I'm curious to hear if you want to weigh in on this question as well as to how we think about Effectively addressing the needs of frontline communities. Thank you so much. I have I've been here thinking about what Carlton was just saying about Bringing in communities and then Molly said Developers don't know their technologists And I just think a multi-scalar analysis is just non-negotiable when we're talking about the relationships between climate change and technology and I've been thinking about Martin Luther King and There's a piece he wrote in 1964 that is actually a reflection on technology and I assign it to students a lot when we're talking about you know environmental movements in the 1960s and like you said technology is not new and the sort of Constellations of technological power shift over time and he was writing in a moment That was really marked by a big tech of that moment, which was the massively destructive infrastructure systems being built for nuclear power and there's a lot of groups Writing against nuclear power and he was writing during Jim Crow and these are two very interconnected power dynamics But he was talking about how seductive and grand and shiny technology is And I have this little quote He describes technology and men flying and spaceships and how attractive it is and then he Just opposes that with society and people and he says poverty of spirit stands in glory glaring contrast to our scientific scientific and technological Abundance so the poverty of spirit Stands in contrast to technological abundance and I invoke this quote because we're talking about false climate solutions And that is a term that is becoming more and more Well known and heard that term doesn't come from our space It comes from the environmental justice movements in the indigenous environmental justice movements. It's a term You know just transition alliance climate justice alliance indigenous environmental Network have used to be able to identify false climate solutions, especially carbon capture and storage and carbon trading and these type of things the N double ACP has also done like tremendous work on carbon trading and I I view my work as sort of contributing to that conversation by looking at artificial intelligence and AI is You know developers don't know their technologists and AI operates in the realm of abstraction and extraction so the abstraction are these political Renditions and the seductiveness and driving through San Francisco. There's like a million billboards for AI And so that's an AI can solve the climate crisis and AI can make carbon trading faster the thing AI is moving into already Data rich environments and all that data has history AI feeds on old data and Whenever we start looking at the actual undergrading Data in environmental laws and environmental policy you immediately get to communities So AI is in the realm of abstraction But that data that water is taking for real communities real houses being flooded So if we have a serious conversation about that abstraction then we're immediately getting into a multi-scaler analysis and the extraction the use of Water to feed AI. There's a lot of equivalent studies starting To be like chat GBT uses X amount of liters of water every time you run it and those are great But we got a center Settler colonialism we got a center racial capitalism in this analysis because as we know like in a history Environmental justice those things get relegated to the appendix and to the footnotes So I think it's about power analysis So I just I love what everyone's saying because this multi-scaler power analysis If we can do these paradigm flips and center these things in our conversation I think we're getting closer to What we want to be talking about Absolutely, I'm setting the power analysis. Yeah, please Please And just recognizing that all data has history, right? All data has completely neutral Data or data without perspective and for without Stories that were intended to be told by the data that was captured Maria I'm going to come to you next to start this next question Although I suspect others on the panel will want to jump in here as well As we think about the importance of identifying scoping and developing projects with positive impact We know it's hard work if it were easy if there were a 10-step checklist We'd all be done. We wouldn't be here. We'd be doing other things with our Friday mornings But it's a lot of work and so people often mention the importance of Designing with the end in mind having a strong development process applying a rights framework But what suggestions do you have to actually start putting these things into practice? Yeah, thank you so much for the question yeah, I think as Technologies often fall into this pitfall of having this cutting-edge method or this cutting-edge technology and Falling into this trap or or this common pitfall of trying to find a nail to a hammer to use their technology on and that's sort of What we should be trying to avoid with AI as well and some of the ways to actually do that is through The circling back to my answer before what's involving multiple multi-sector stakeholders That really helps scope the pathway from these technologies from development from from research development to To deployment and that's one of the ways but often More iron level and more important considerations even in how these teams are assembled Is very important to one all they are addressing equity considerations in their projects that is very important and one thing that often ties to this is all the Project all also addresses diversity equity and inclusion within their project and often we see that if you have a very diverse diverse team not in a bunch of axes Those equity considerations are much better scoped out as well so this thing circle back to each other and also Not thinking just from the project scope, but all the way through impact to the communities and all these serves in the end Absolutely again keeping in mind throughout the whole process and who this serves at the end Emily, I know that you do a lot of work in this space and you have done a lot of work here And how we think about applying especially a rights framework to the work we do Can you talk to us a little bit about what does that look at like in practice? Sure So I if I may I I feel like we'd be remiss to not sort of pause on something Incredibly important happening as we speak in the Hague I'm if you don't know the International Court of Justice, which is one of the principal organs of the UN is hearing Certainly in our my lifetime the most historic case right now of what is on on the atrocities on going in Gaza and There's definitely a climate Impact and component also not to the case, but what what's happening in Gaza and if I'll circle it back to that but I Think we have to talk about these things as they're happening right now and as they're applying to violations of international law and human rights law Israel has is using AI How it is bombarding Gaza. It's called the gospel That's the program that that they're using. There's actually three programs, but the one that actually Makes the determination of where it's going to bomb is called the gospel and they're supposedly All this data then that's you know at a microsecond Figure it out or or analyze you guys are technologists, you know the right terms to this to determine What's the target and then there's supposedly? Human beings who look at that data and then take that up the command in the military structures to say this is the target There have been 29,000 Bombs just since this is up to about November that have been dropped in the smallest and most densely populated place on the planet By contrast in and that's just in six weeks by contrast the United States dropped 29,199 Bombs in Iraq over the whole of the country in one year That should give you an idea of how bad it is and we don't need to agree on anything, but those are facts That is largely happening through AI There is no Law that figures out how we use these things we need to come to terms with that But there are definitely laws as to how laws of war laws of human rights laws of the environment And all of these things should apply in a virtual world as well Lastly I want to say that There's very much a climate component here as well because Israel and Palestine We we if her global temperatures have increased to 1.1 and we're already in a really bad place In 2015 the Paris Agreement said we were going to try not to get to 1.5 We were going to commit to holding the two Guess what Israel and Palestine is already at 1.5 By the end of the century Gaza will be at four degrees Celsius when you're fighting an occupation and a 17 year blockade 75 year occupation and Now a bombardment where nearly 29,000 people are dead in 97 days How do you combat climate change? How is it disproportionately oppressing and marginalizing you There's an opportunity here for the geopolitical and humanitarian crisis that is ongoing To also be looked at through an environmental lens, and I think again I Would be remiss not to mention this today when a historic case is happening. It is Martin Luther King, Jr.'s You know weekend on Monday, and if we're not talking about social justice, and I don't know what we're talking about So, you know there you go. That is the most stark example of AI. I could I I would be remiss not to mention today is Literally killing people No, Polly. I think one of things you phrase is something I think is Lost sometimes in the conversations about technology and climate or AI generally certainly AI and climate is that there are a lot of the Conversations can center around future harms and what happens if the technology goes rampant What happens when the technology of AI causes all of the robots to attack us all but There are real harms happening today. There are real challenges around issues of equity and justice happening today and There are real challenges around climate impact today Affecting lives today, and so it's important that even as we have conversations about making Long-term systemic change long-term processes to chains in changes in regulation or laws We remember and also trying to make a difference for how the technology and how the climate is affecting lives today Yeah, just exactly. I love that you said that before because I think the not The thing that people forget in the in the zeitgeist is this is the future scenario Climate as well as how AI is being applied to in this in the example I gave create mass atrocities. It's ongoing, right? So these are not future scenarios and the conversation is so Preciant and relevant. Can I Build on that. Yes, please do Today and past tense And I love what you said like what doesn't mean to have climate change solution is during a genocide and One of the things I saw at work in the occupied Palestinian territories In terms of water apartheid is a very old law that was created in 1967 And this was called military order 158 and this was a time when The major water company, Mekorot Began collaborate raiding with Israeli military to uphold water apartheid. So this is a very very old water law and This same company today is leading climate solutionism for water Throughout the world it has branches in the United States and Latin America It is set to control and oversee over 3,000 water pumping stations and it's creating a sustainability agenda for optimizing water resources But then the question comes what does optimization mean when we're not confronting these underlying power Dynamics and water apartheid looks like Palestinians Prior to October 7th only having access to 70 liters of water a day Which is well below the World Health Organization average Israelis consuming four times as much water average Palestinian family Spending 33 to 50 percent of their income income on clean water supplies So that's what water apartheid is and so if we're not looking at these this old data and these old companies like that are Undergrading AI innovation that we're not doing climate justice work and it's perpetuating Perpetuating water crisis and it's perpetuating Climate crisis and the name of public interest Thank you. I'd like to jump in on that please do you get back on that and you know go back to kind of some of the early ideas about Technology and Jackie Lu for example talking about technology as a technique And so we kind of think about technology as you know a mechanism a you know an electrical device But you know political systems are technologies You know economic systems are technologies and I think one of the challenges We have particularly in the United States right because we have an outsized footprint in terms of our per capita You know a greenhouse gas production right and then we have an outside outsized history in terms of the number of greenhouse gases that we have placed into the atmosphere and I think it also puts on us therefore a responsibility as citizens of this country to help develop the technology That will change that scenario and when you mention that water company It reminds me of the fact that we Participate in the success of American corporations. Yeah, and so when American corporations are the problem We cannot distance ourselves from them by just pointing fingers there has to be some technology developed that allows us as citizens to Move corporations that we support into practices that actually are helpful for people And if we don't kind of create that technology We will continue to replicate all of these adverse effects that come from technological development So in the context for example of you know in the environment, we have PFAS all over We have PFAS in our fresh water. We have PFAS in our fresh fish. We have PFAS in our bloodstreams PFAS is a chemical that was developed by corporations that were attempting to produce products that we would buy Where do we have the conversation with those corporations that are providing us with those products that says you have to do this a Different way, or is that our government's responsibility? And if we are in a democracy aren't we the government? So I find it there's a kind of a disconnect for us particularly in America where we have all this development We have all this technology and we consume the goods from the corporations And we elect the people in the government and we point all kinds of fingers now I'm not trying to release from responsibility right the CEOs and the board of directors and the shareholders or the elected officials But I'm troubled by how quickly and easily We distance ourselves from responsibility for these behaviors that actually We are intricately tied to an inextricable web that we have as dr. King said Right that ties us together. We need technological innovations that allow us to move our corporations that depend upon us Right, they can't exist all of them are not multinational as successful as some of them are they can't exist without us And yet we feel that we are bound to them Whatever they do, we're bound to it I don't like the way Apple is kind of managing the new iPhone and slowing down the data of access of the old iPhone But what can we do? So somehow we've got to get past that gap Yeah, it's a good call to action for us all and recognizing as you said if we're in a democracy Then aren't we the government and so you also said about What can we do what can we actually do in holding companies accountable and hoarding and holding corporations? Accountable Marie. I'm gonna come to you next. So we're having this conversation around Balancing we can do we can't do different policies And as we think about how to balance between optimizing specific solutions and community impact versus society level impact How should we begin to think about that right some the impacts of climate? Can look differently for specific individuals? Communities versus broadly Similarly the actions individuals versus communities versus the world can take and look different. So how do we think about? Balancing and optimizing specific problems versus widespread impact. Yeah, that's that's a great question. Thank you so much Yeah, I will Tie this back to some of the points that the doctor at Waterhouse just mentioned so it's interesting that a Lot of the conversation nowadays Is about how we are going to reach net zero. So everyone is aware that we need to Reach net zero. There's a lot of raising awareness for individuals lot awareness for companies Everyone sort of tries to to move more sustainably towards options and products that are like that One thing that we often miss is that as we develop these new technologies The resources often are coming from global south to power Sustainability in the global north, right? So I always try to look at technology development With these lands that development is often technology is often a accelerator of development and but development is often a Accelerator of inequity and that's what also ties to to this climate change Action that is happening all around the world a lot of inequity is stemming also and is exacerbating from that as well. So as as Individuals we really need to be aware. Okay. Do I need to have a new phone every year or every couple of years? Or do I need a new laptop? Where are these resources that power my my my? Devices coming from for instance as we choose alternatives like is an electric car the right solution or should I as an individual be asking my Municipality my my district for better Public transportation choices. So it's really looking at Both where individual action can help but also where sort of our decisions impact the offerings that Companies governments put forward for the communities at large and how these is all interconnected in the end because supply chains Are global in the sense? Absolutely, I think I think what you said about as we lean more into technology the effects that it has and sometimes Using the resources of the global south to power the productivity and the gains of the global north is really Really important something that we should sit with and examine I was just told that we have time for a couple of audience questions So if anyone has a question or I already see one hand here We'll go ahead and start just right in front of you Aaron. Yeah Thanks y'all for all your all your thoughts and words my question. I think starts with dr. Sousa But if maybe you all have thoughts my question is do you see AI and machine learning modeling as a form of maybe Columbus thing or like Recolonizing solutions and predictive models that we already had from you know indigenous communities frontline communities and folks who have been like sounding the alarm on climate crisis and You know environmental degradation and displacement for decades. Thank you Yeah, thank you very much Yeah, I have Maybe my background. I'm not a computer scientist. So my background is actually From engineering so a lot of what we are seeing now with machine learning and AI is Because there are there is more data. There is more Availability of computation There's this sort of promise that I can be used for so many things But at the same time like in engineering like Different breads simpler breads of machine learning or intelligence systems you if you want to call it that consume a lot less resources that don't need barely Data have been used for a long time and have Accelerated a lot of innovation and a lot of the comforts that we have today. So I Don't see AI as a solution for all and there are many other ways that are not like Okay, just give me every day thing the world this machine at these algorithm can learn by its own not incorporating any indigenous knowledge any expert knowledge even in the process so I believe that there is a lot of Work still for expert driven systems Incorporating Human knowledge into systems and some of them can use a part of AI some probably don't need AI at all and Some will need to be AI driven Some problems are just too hard for for humans to be able to parse the amount of information and the Complexities that exist for some problems And I think you and I see we have one other question, but just want to comment on what you said Maria I think it's also important that we do acknowledge the cases where AI is really helpful Right, there are plenty of use cases where AI is helpful to your point There's some challenges in going through vast amount of data or the level of predictions that we would like to make That humans at this point, we don't know how to do it But AI can be helpful in those situations and so I think part of the balance is also understanding when Technology is the right answer when AI is the right answer and when it isn't Thank you for a fantastic Conversation much needed. I'm Fatima Shafi from Spellman College And I'm glad to be here and learn all this Information one of the thing that dr. Bullard always says is that all communities are not created equal And I want to add to that all states are not created equal and the state possess Abundance of power, especially if you look at the states that are really Impacted by climate change in the southeast like Texas Louisiana and then you look at the power of state to even Interfere what you said this stratification of the power when hurricane Harvey hit Before that the governor Abbott started saying that this is an emergency No corporation is going to be hold responsible for act of God. So he stopped all the monitoring during that period and In the community of Manchester mostly Latinx they had this spell that at some point was 325 Level of benzene, which is really way below that you wear moon suit and Then they did neither EPA nor the state responded for monitoring and once Environmental Defense Fund send their mobile they did the data What happened the state rejected the data? They said well, you know, we don't know about how good this data is So I think that the problem is way even broader in terms of The crisis of democracy and says your access is your question around How we can how do we how do we can get governments to? Act on the data even I mean Not I would say it's even more basic than that Because here the government Prevent the generation of data and then when community is very resourceful and yet You know NGOs involve and generate that data. They said that data is not good So maybe how do we think about how do we really talk about democracy and that power dynamic that you were taught and come with solution For the environmental injustices that are gonna be intensified and Magnified because as you know climate is a so how do we think about technology? data and Democracy together Could I quickly say something? Yes, yeah, I don't think we We ever said the word bias and How can we have a conversation? I mean forget all the like grandiose thoughts and ideas Just think about it as a human being Everything you come to you're biased as I speak. I'm biased Right, which is why when I gave some numbers earlier. I was like these are facts, you know And I probably even got the global warming stats wrong, you know, but But but nonetheless, let me let me just which I told my fellow panelists about earlier This happened in I want to say November or no October Here's a question posed to chat GPT and you can all Google this and look same question. Do Israelis deserve justice? Justice is a fundamental principle that applies to all individuals and groups regardless of their nationality or background and There's more but I'll leave it there same question Do Palestinians deserve justice the question of justice for Palestinians is a complex and highly debated issue many people and Organizations advocate for the rights and justice of the Palestinians particularly in the constant context of the Israeli okay, and it goes on Insert whatever topic you want Chad GPT is going to spit out what is available and so to not talk about our prejudices our biases are The fact that indigenous folks to next question and Maria's answer Are they experts? Do we live in a society that? Values that knowledge or do we carve out intentional spaces to capture information that hasn't what been peer reviewed or right? We've got to address That big elephant in the room Think that question That you're one of the questions I think that you're getting to Amali is who do we consider experts? Do we let people be experts in their own lives and listen to the expertise? From a variety of different spaces and from a variety of different people tying back to how we started today's conversation about Big challenges require big solutions with new partnerships new stakeholders and a disciplinary thinking I want to thank all of the panelists. Oh, I'm so sorry one more question. Yes, Dave. Go ahead Two more questions. Just kidding. Okay If you have is this on I think if you have the time so Dr. Dry you said something really interesting which is you know the data is coming from the past and we're interpreting it But the other thing that's now happening is through the churn new data are being created constantly through the algorithmic Logics of these systems and they're gaining veracity, you know, they're becoming real So there is absolutely this historicity to all these data and it's simultaneously Generating new information. So how do we start to? Build the kind of knowledge systems of that both and moment, you know It's not just for you But as you're all thinking about that like the new data are being generated given truth and now Perpetuating themselves and then feeding back into the systems. So all of this is happening simultaneously How do we think about that? What does it mean for these questions and democracy and access and so Thank you for that question I'm just I'm just reflecting on what everyone's saying and thinking through this in real time But it I was thinking about another bullard quote and he said the burden of proof falls on the communities Not on the perpetrators and this gets into the politics of data and expertise that we're talking about right now and There is something about this mass generation of information like overabundance of information and as someone who studies Settler colonialism a lot. I see how information how it Functions as a like a under documentation But also an over documentation and that like I've read thousands and thousands of pages of Congressional records and like and I'm not chat GBT like just one person and it's a lot of work, but Something else that Martin Luther King has written about that inspires me is staying with the trouble staying with the conflicts and the Contradictions like let's not try to collapse everything into binaries and so maybe this is where we this is where it happens like With the data and with the information and honoring the expertise of those folks who've been doing this burden this labor Like in life or death conditions these frontline communities to document their experiences And I you know, I just finished a piece my editors are waiting There's a youth organization National Indian Youth Council of Albuquerque who in the 1970s did a lot of data policy analysis and work to intervene and to these like colonial modalities of environmental impact statements and reporting and I've been reading their work in the Appendices in the footnotes where they're relegated And they're just making really powerful critique about the data and information and they know the history of quantitative water La they know the history of allocation. They are the experts and so Maybe we don't need to get swept away and seduced by the like mass production and the currents of information being produced And the story is being told about that information by the Jeff Bezos characters Maybe we can engage the contradictions of this information by listening to different teachers For different interpretive advices, but I'm just I'm very super inspired by you all and by these audience questions So thank you so much. Yeah We have one more question. Yeah, at least one more question Yeah, last question maybe thank you for this panel This has been super insightful, and I love the diversity in backgrounds. I'm a yeti I'm a research software engineer at an environmental NGO based within UC Berkeley And I think one of the questions that stuck with me from this conversation And I feel is not fully resolved yet and brings us back to the beginning is the question of what do we mean by Technology, we've heard a lot of different definitions I think we've heard the definition that I'm more familiar with which is AI and machine learning kind of the hot topic of today we've also heard the definition of fire and mills and You know different structures that govern society as we've moved through history, and so I'm curious whether Technology is just progress and what does that mean? I know there's kind of talk of progress being the field enlightenment project So I'd love to hear your thoughts and maybe see if we can pinpoint a definition And maybe it differs also by by discipline Love your thoughts on that. Thank you Great question. Do you want to go? Thanks Amali for volunteering Yes, that's fine Well, I'm probably not gonna help get us to an answer One of my earliest Professors said something to me You you have to Anything you're studying you you have to look at it in its intellectual context and as The humanitarian who works with people who are displaced and the poorest and marginalized places on the planet who Don't have access to what the global north considers technology. So for me roads and schools. Yeah if you're poor And we don't have to go to Somalia Let's let's go to Little Haiti right in Miami where where I also have worked and and you go there and talk to people in Liberty City and Little Haiti and Then contrast that to the same questions. You'll ask people that live in downtown Miami And you're gonna get vastly different answers Because it's the intellectual context in which that oppression is happening, right? Do I have access? No My next question what limits that access? That's how you find a solution and That to me is expertise and that's all that climate refugees exist to do to me The only sources of information is the community is the person who is being a crime is being perpetrated upon Whatever insert that that right because the context changes. So when I got a little Haiti, I'm not talking about international law But when I go to Gaza, yeah, I'm looking at international humanitarian law and how it protects the natural environment Right its context Thank you I think we have one more question. Yeah, and I think this is the last one, okay Yeah, so so thank you so much We will give our thanks after this last question and do the whole thing So so dr. Waterhouse this this is spurred from your From your highlight about The way law is Sort of done in this context of you know, do we need ten to the negative fifth? Do we need ten to the negative six? What what what is it that we need with respect to that and how? The community knows something's not right So how do we quantify? That that's not right so that we can You know put it in our equation to do that So let me ask you this for you dr. Waterhouse and then everyone everyone else and dr. Dreyer You as well, so what is the You So are you are youth is the suggestion that the community Organizations or these local organizations we we work to find a Way to bring in some sort of quantitative Element maybe by partnering with a university to find the math for A way to explain the problem on the ground say for instance in your I'm trying to get to I'm trying to get to what is it Specifically that we need to be thinking about on the ground so that general-purpose government Can understand Clearly what's wrong? So let let me try to use an example with lead So lead is one of the oldest environmental justice kind of phenomenon's we have in the country, right? We date it back to you know the early 1900s when it's being used in paint And we have doctors who are saying at that time that we're seeing kind of disparities in the experiences of children From their exposure to lead and that these disparities increasingly are seen in children who live in these urban environments where there's large levels of lead and this paint is peeling and it's not well maintained and the lead industry actually has an association like The lead industry actually supports an association that is actually talking about this which is surprising At the same time lead gets used and introduced in gasoline and Then the problem spreads because now the lead is not just limited to people who are living in that kind of housing But also to anyone who lives adjacent to a major thoroughfare and Particularly for children who are living in places where there's dirt When they are going to get exposed to that dirt or where they are living and breathing in the lead lead is heavy So it falls quickly So lead is in our environment in the United States Right, it's all over African-Americans find themselves disproportionately exposed Disproportionately exposed and this is proportionally poisoned by lead Even as our level of lead exposure has decreased and it has drastically Because we got lead out of fuel because we stopped having paint that was made with lead There's still lead out there. There's still houses that have lead paint There's still homes that have lead in their soils as a result of exposure either from gasoline Use or from lead smelters or from lead mining Now when I have a meeting and I say we want to deal with the problem of lead We at the Environmental and Climate Justice Center have developed a lead survey where we go through and look at all of the lead Prolacies from all of the states across the country to see what is the protection they're providing people from lead When we do that There's about 20 questions. We're asking about what the state is doing to address the problem of lead Because you can't just say protect us from lead because there's lead in the soils There's lead in the air. There's lead in the paint. How do we protect you? Do we actually require people who are Leasing property to do lead analysis before they have people who can come in? Okay, we do that What level of lead is the actual level that is going to be acceptable if it's found in dust in the home? Is it zero? Is it point five, you know micrograms per kilogram? What is it? Same thing for lead and water. There's lead in the solder that is in some of the pipes in our homes And even after to replace all of the lead in the public lines Right, which is happening through billions of dollars of funding that the bipartisan infrastructure law put out there for lead Even after to replace all the public lines in the inside of the house Some of us have lead in our pipes and some of us don't have lead pipes, but we have lead solder How much lead in the water is going to be okay? And if we just say zero, we can't have any PFAS in the water There can be no lead in the water. There can be no XYZ in the air if we call for pristine Then all of our companies are shutting down They're shutting down Because there isn't a pristine process that actually allows us to live in the environment without doing violence So either we have to be ready to radically change the way we live our lives Or we have to be able to talk about levels of What's acceptable so we need expertise in our communities through partnerships and otherwise So we can have communities go to talk with specifics about levels of what's acceptable when they're advocating For what their needs are so is there an information gap in terms of the the flow of information Your 20 questions you find out is there a flow of information gap coming from that information too because I don't know if This is this is I don't know if my grandparents knew All of that information that there was lead in the pipes and that there's lead in my House and that it can do this sort of thing so that they can say no, I don't want that I want to change you know what I mean so the information about what is being done That seems to me to be a slightly skewed you know two-way street, so How do we deal with that I Think this is the work of public interest technologists is to say How do we work in within communities? How do we make sure that we have people from within communities who have both the technical and non-technical expertise? Because you know this idea of how does the lead and effect is what is that level? It's a very technical question, but also I live my life with my quality of life like that's a very non-technical question as Well, so it really takes that in our place, so we think Figuring out this answer and how we then get to policy changes how we then get to corporate changes and more is the work of Public interest technology and the public interest technology university network has actually funded a number of these programs across the country at Many of its member universities. I know at Boston University. They have a large center Which is centered I think in their school of data sciences and has I think it's The most diverse School right now and they have their students working on issues that matter to them and the students work in local communities They work and on issues that matter to them and they work with the Boston City Council to the extent that the Boston City Council now when they have a question They go to this group of students to say help us figure out What's what is the actual number that we need in different situations? What's the actual number that we need? What is the actual data on the ground? What's the actual sentiment on the ground they go to these centers and they know the pit you and has funded these Types of pit clinics across the country. They're also a handful of actually more than a handful probably of non-profit organizations that are doing similar work. There's code the dream which is based in A city in North Carolina, I don't it's based in North Carolina and they essentially provide Technical education lots of programming courses and apprenticeships to students mostly immigrants mostly people who are You know college age or much older than college age started as something for People who were dreamers status who couldn't get into college but needed that training to say let's provide you with a technical education And what are the problems that you are facing in your communities and let's build software around that? so one of the programs that they built that's been really successful is An app that helps provide resources or connect resources to Migrant farmer communities as they move around so some of the people who developed that were themselves children of migrant farmers They knew the community They knew the issues after they got this technical training They were able to be that bridge and actually build a solution that's helping to provide Resources to people that they actually need when they actually need them in the different places. They need them I think other projects that organization has done has been around helping people get their driver's license restored And then actually working with city governments to help Automate that process so that people after they've lost their driver's license for whatever reason When it can be restored doing that process automatically so they can actually then drive again back to work Back to their jobs back to ways to visit or to support their family So I think this very much is the question of public interest technology and what we're doing And so I think just one other thing as we think about how do we continue to do more of that? I know there were start people are starting to have conversations amongst some of the funder community as well I was to say that in this environment of a number of layoffs in the tech industry How do we capture some of that talent maybe provide a buffer between what community-based organizations often pay and the tech sector pays They're probably not matching it completely But is there something in between that we can do so we can take that technical talent and pair them with Community-based organizations and so on a day-to-day basis say what issues do you have around what air quality looks like? What water quality looks like in your area what water policies look like in your area And you've got this technical talent here as this resource to Understand your issues who may come from your communities Who may want to learn about those and then to build on these solutions together and advocate together for more Systemic and lasting change Can I make a specific pill? Yes. Yeah, very quick So we actually need some technology technological help We have the data that we've gained on this survey We'd like to turn it into an app so that community members can look and see what? protections are being provided by their governments in their states and Advocate for improvement on particular areas where the government is falling short We think that having an app would go so much further than having a study that people could go to on our website Technologically, we don't know how to do that. So I'm hoping I'll find some partners here How do people get a hold of you at Howard Law School? Yeah, someone wants to do it and how in partnership with you at Howard Law School How do they get a hold of you they can reach me a Carlton dot water house at Howard? Well, we look forward to being back here in a year and talking about About about this work, but I'm I saw it give a walk up. I'm seeing you walk towards the stage So I'm gonna take this as the as the clue that we are out of time. So again want to thank all of our Waterhouse Dr. Theodore Dreyer and Dr. Maria Jalsu. So thank you so much for your time and expertise really reminding us But it's important to stay with the trouble and to do the hard work that matters Thank you to you all for attending both in person and virtually and Please stay around for the afternoon panels today, and I know we've a panel on Monday as well For the AI symposium. So thank you so much This is great give them a great big round of applause great big great big great big Thank you so much and to the moderator of fool Bruce


When Elizabeth Warren dropped out we were told to give her and her supporters a lot of space let them grieve You know allow them some time for self-care Let her go on Saturday night live as people, you know lose their homes and die due to a lack of health insurance But you know it's funny because Bernie Sanders dropped out and We're not given that same courtesy. Nobody is saying let's let the Bernie bros have a little bit of time for self-care The establishment almost immediately after Bernie Sanders dropped out told us all to fall in line Or eat shit because Bernie bros was the number one trending hashtag on Twitter Along with you know other themes that we see from the corporate wing of the Democratic Party blew no matter who by by Bernie and vote for Biden and you know, it's funny corporate Democrats They're not even wasting a minute to you know demand that Bernie Sanders put in the work to get Joe Biden elected It's not Joe Biden who's got to do that It's Bernie Sanders who is obligated to make sure that Joe Biden is dragged across the finish line David Axelrod tweeted Bernie Sanders bowed to the math and acknowledging that Joe Biden will be the nominee He used the time today to laud his movement But if his goal is to defeat real Donald Trump He'll have to make a more affirmative case for Biden and why his supporters should support him So it's not Joe Biden who has to make the case for Joe Biden. It's Bernie Sanders who has to make the case for Joe Biden Okay so What does Joe Biden have to do like realistically speaking? I'm asking neo liberals What do you believe Joe Biden is responsible for doing like does he have any role in winning himself? Or does that all fall on the shoulders of Bernie Sanders like I genuinely am asking earnestly? I want to know because I don't believe that they think Joe Biden has to do anything.  You know, that's the way that it seems And if we're not being told to fall in line then we're being guilt-tripped because Marcos Molitz has tweeted out I'm not voting for Joe Biden translates to I want Trump to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg to which Joy Reid responded succinctly put now again, I don't want Donald Trump to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg But why are we to blame when Ruth Bader Ginsburg should have Resigned when Obama was president like why didn't she do that? Maybe it's the case that our entire Democracy shouldn't hinge on the health of someone who's what 90 plus years old Maybe our system itself is a little bit flawed if that's what it has come down to you know But again, this will never be on their backs.  I congratulate Joe Biden a very decent man Who I will work with to move our progressive ideas forward now?   That wouldn't be enough They want you to completely roll over and declare Joe Biden God and Maybe just maybe they would think that you've done enough to appease the king. How about this?     I mean these people are just they're so Insufferable and if they've demonstrated anything to the left that I want the left to take away Is that we can't work with these people?  You've got to understand that Democrats and Republicans they subscribe to the same neoliberal Pro-capitalist cult ideology. I'll be it to different degrees, but it's the same ideology nonetheless Republicans just want full-on open markets, you know Democrats. They want a few tweaks around the edges so working with them when their ideology is Completely opposed to everything that we stand for it's not going to work like it makes for really strange bedfellows that Relationship is impossible because you know, these are irreconcilable differences So you've got to understand that these people they can't be worked with they can't be reasoned with they are your enemy The Democratic Party is your enemy and the quicker the left understands that The better off I think we'll all be because you can't actually affect change if you don't know what you're dealing with If you don't know who your enemy is right? So the Democratic Party all of the leaders there They are your enemy. They are the barrier to change that we have to break down if we ever want to win Now that's not to say that Republicans are any better That's not to say that Donald Trump is better than Joe Biden. I don't believe that but what I am saying is that? This two-party duopoly has been absolutely crushing not just to Americans but to the planet as a whole and you can't Delude yourself into thinking that we can somehow win over these people. No, they have to be thoroughly Defeated as I said before either they've got to defeat us entirely or we've got to defeat them But this marriage can't last it won't last because working with Democrats When you know their views are diametrically opposed with everything that we stand for it's not possible We want Medicare for all they're fighting to stop that We want a Green New Deal. They're fighting to stop that now. They say they support a Green New Deal, but again, that's That's just lip service, right? When you look at what Joe Biden stands for his record on climate change Does it really mean anything to you when he says he supports a Green New Deal? Of course not So, you know the path to change is direct grassroots organizing and making sure that we are Uncivil disruptive and as a quote-unquote toxic as they say we are because guess what? You can't just sit idly by and go out to brunch While this party continues to run the country into the ground and allow fascists to win We have to absolutely get even more rowdy than we were before organized strikes Make sure that we let them know that just because Bernie lost, you know, we're not just gonna roll over and die We're not going to succumb to the pressures of the establishment.  I will just say that Democrats are completely shameless, but I'm already preaching to the choir. I think you all know that by now


as I said before and maybe as a beginning of you is working on products so I asked here around a little bit already everybody in product development or services or E2B services? Are you in a services industry or product industry? Services? Services? or consulting? As I said I'm Chris and I'm here today to let you a little bit now about agile mindset not set into an IT environment but more into an environment out of the IT into a more global environment in the organization and how this can help you to build actually more innovative and more or better products yourself. So this what I'm talking about here is actually set out of different trainings, several trainings, different trainings which are lasting at least two days usually. So in this 25 minutes I can obviously only scratch the surface. Okay I put up at 11 workshops so if you find this interesting and you want to do something and maybe work on your own products in this workshop you can do this like for an hour we can plant into lunch we have time I just have to catch my flight at 6.30 to 9. That's all. So yeah before we actually can start about understanding how an agile mindset can improve innovation I want to talk a little bit about why we need to innovate why it is very important to be innovative and one of the reasons is that in the last years the globalization mostly because of faster internet and more availability all over the world of internet is getting stronger and stronger so theoretically if the rise of coffee drops in Guatemala it can influence our economy here in Singapore. Okay many many companies in the world try to keep their business model and in the new recent developments we see the company style a very famous example is Polaroid. So Polaroid is not existing anymore but they had a very disrupting technology I mean you just took a picture and you could look at it. Okay you wait two three minutes but basically that's that's what it is. If you want to come more in front I don't have to shout to Laugh and it's cool here too it's cool here too and be a little bit more cozy. I like that. So exactly so organizations like that are dying which are already existing for like hundred years and had a lot of disrupting innovations. So other examples are like everybody you know probably Airbnb so Airbnb managed it in the last five years to get as many hotel rooms as the Hilton Hotel Group in 90 years. Or hotel rooms. Not real hotel rooms but all for rooms let's tell it like that. And this shows how you can build and everybody of us can build actually with a great idea good idea which solves the problem we can actually disrupt a whole business model or yeah a whole business model. Uber you can think of them ethically or in terms of management practice whatever you want but you cannot neglect the fact that all of the world cab drivers are going mats over Uber you know. In Spain I think they even attacked Uber drivers. Cab drivers I think it might be right you heard that. So this shows how just an idea can actually disrupt a whole business model. Yellow cabs in New York are endangered theoretically. And after they burned in Spain they said that they will do food delivery and these kind of things. We did all the publicity that they got from all this. Yeah exactly that's that's another idea. But this is more about the management tactics and management priorities. In Germany they got banned and the chairman CEO basically said I don't care. We just go on. If you get stopped by the police what will they do? They can say I'm driving with my friend. You have no chance actually to actually get these fees. So another example is Google which started as a search engine and today is a three hundred billion dollar business within like 15 years or 16 years. So you see nowadays it is not important only to keep your existing business model running but to look at other opportunities and to look how can we keep going. How can we still content with such disrupting organizations coming out of nothing right. So in the last decades the duration of a fortune 500 company dropped dramatically. I don't know the exact numbers but the duration of a company being in the fortune 500 got less and less and less of the last decades. That means that just being big doesn't give you anything. Just having maybe and now good running business model doesn't mean you will survive forever. I think General Motors is kind of insignificant nowadays even though it was the biggest car supply in the world. As an excerpt I want to talk a little bit about what is an Agile mindset and everybody I guess who doesn't notice the Agile manifesto. Anybody here who never heard about the Agile manifesto. You heard about it? You didn't hear yet. Okay. You heard about it. Okay. Okay if you're more interested into this I cannot go into detail during 25 minutes. Later talk in the breakout room if you're interested in the workshop we can decide what we're talking about and what we're doing in the breakout room. But basically also about 15-16 years ago a group of software engineers came together and said the way we are doing software today doesn't work. 70% of all projects failed in terms of getting more expensive than initially planned or are taking longer than initially planned. I think it's even 76% or something like this. So they came together and said the way we are doing software is not good. We need to change something so they put over the Agile manifesto. Learning from other industries. So there's a lot of lean manufacturing inside. There's a lot of management theories unfortunately at that time. It's getting more practical but there's a lot of these ideas inside this Agile manifesto. And now they claim, of course they claim always they're doing best that they're doing better software now. The real purpose of this one is also to create business value for your customer. So you create a product or you have a project or you run an outsourcing project and you want to create a value in the end. And you're giving this by being transparent to your people and let your people be in the process, in the whole process involved. Traditional processes like waterfall are following like an assembly line. So everybody is standing alone in the room. So you have first the architect, he's doing something, then it goes a step further. The designer is doing something, it's going a step further. The developer is doing something. The tester, the maintainer. And the maintainer only if you get paid because you went over time. So this actually splits up all these roles. It doesn't think in this assembly line, mentality anymore. Okay, it gives, lets everybody build the product and the project or deliver the project together. And this is based on a theory which came actually a little bit later. But if you look at it now, you think that this could be actually the basis how Simon Sinek described it in his golden circle. Anybody knows the golden circle? Okay, nice. So that's exactly what actually it's based on because in an agile team, you give transparency over the whole project, over the purpose of the project. And you let everybody participate. And this is what's happening here too with the why. So the purpose of the project is basically also the why in the golden circle. And Simon Sinek says it from a view of communication. He says, if you communicate your why and the real purpose for what you stand for in your organization, it's much more easy to find like like minded people who connect very easily with you. And that's the real reason also in the Agile Manifesto. So you find easier people who are connected with you, who are more encouraged to do the best for the project and work on a like minded set. We can go more detailed into the golden circle also in the breakout room if you're interested. But I can really not cover too much details about this. As I said, that's several trainings over like, let's say in total like 10 days, I cannot cover within 25 minutes for sure. Yes. So how does this fit into an agile organization? So what I always tell people, and I had a long discussion, I don't know what language this is. And I don't understand it. And I hope it actually confirms what I say. Better don't read it. But I had this discussion also with Rasmus. Many people implement Scrum or XP or Kanban into the development teams. But the whole organization is still working as before with traditional. And then Scrum doesn't work. Agile doesn't work. And then they wonder they play Scrum. Okay, the only thing why they say Scrum or Agile or whatever doesn't work is because suddenly it shows the problem. Waterfall doesn't show problems. It doesn't just say, okay, we are late now. Okay, we need to extend the project line. But it doesn't show you in the process problems. And this is what Scrum does. All this is based on what Douglas McGregor described in 60s already with two management models and how you perceive people in your organization. So I like this graphic from Wikipedia because it's actually displaying here already this two management models. This is management model X and management model Y. So in management model X, we say, or it is said that people are only working because they have to get to work. They need their money to provide for their family. And they need to survive. And that's why they think people are primarily driven by monetary value. Opposite to that is the theory why. Theory why says people want to work. People are eager to give the best for the organization if the conditions in the organizations are correct. For example, as I just said, if the organization communicate why they exist, what they are standing for, and then they might identify with the same why because they have the same mindset, they have the same values. And that's why they give the best for the organization. So this is if you want to build up an agile organization, you need to set the conditions that your people want to work. How can you do that? I don't know how much time I have left. Nine minutes I have left. Wonderful. Perfectly in time. I'm actually below time. I check people on time box. So how can you do this? So what everything goes back, I think everybody knows who is working with Scrum. So you know all this. That's the three legs of Scrum. Transparency, inspection and adaption.  Blah, blah, blah, blah. At all the spaces, Steve Thurming's plan new check act, who knows the PDCA side? We have a proof. You want to switch? So this is actually where this works on.  Plan new check act is actually what Scrum is doing. So plan what you do first, you do it, you checked, was it good? And then you act on that one. So you have the sprint landing, you have to sprint itself, you have to retrospective at the rear view, and then you have again the sprint landing and the pediment back lock. Right? How you implement that? So I'm not an advocate for Scrum. I'm not an advocate for Kanban and advocate for Scrumban and advocate for any process framework which comes out of agile. I'm just, there are good things in every of these frameworks. So how you implement it for your organization doesn't matter. Yeah. I'm also not someone who says that's why in my, in the program is written a lean slash agile mindset. Because for me, it's just one family lean agile management, 3.0, radical management, beyond budgeting, whatever. It's all, it's all actually one family. So how you do this, where you take your best practices, it doesn't matter.  You don't need to change for, for the sake of change.  Just thinking that the traditional ways aren't working as much today every start. So I just think that the traditional working aren't working. That's why. Sorry, I got back again. 15 years ago, these guys came together and said, what we are doing is actually not working. So we need to change something. So far any questions? I still have a slide we can go run through. As I said, we can go more deeper in the breakout room. So far no questions. So for innovation itself, as you know, in Silicon Valley, where the best foundations available in the world for startups for innovative projects, nine of ten innovations fail. So if you're thinking about more remote locations, Singapore would be maybe similar, than we have, I don't know. Israel is very famous for its startup culture. I heard Tallinn is very famous for its startup culture. Berlin is getting a little bit famous. But if you're looking at Ho Chi Minh City or Lom Pen, I don't think that we would probably say that 9.9999999999 out of ten innovation projects fail. And when I say fail, it means that the money is lost. It doesn't mean, okay, we are not Google, we are not Apple, but we're still existing. No, it's bad. So if you're thinking about like this, unicorns, which they are called, one million dollar evaluated startups, then we are thinking about a chance of 9.99999 out of ten projects we get a unicorn one day. Okay. So some years. First of all, don't forget this. Mostly is innovations fail because of two reasons. If you put innovation into an existing organization, management, directors and leaderships are afraid of investing into innovations, putting money aside and say, okay, just do some innovation here. Because they are afraid of the risk going on. They can't really evaluate the risk. They will get something back, a return on investment. This is one reason. If you're looking at startups, startups fail because they don't really solve problems. Somebody has a great idea. It might be super duper software, but it doesn't solve any problem for people, for real world people. And that's why Eric Green, Steve Blank, Alex Ostervater, Ash Maria came up with this full step approach, which they call, which was in the book from Eric Green's Lean Startup, and which can be best explained, which I call an Android approach, which can be best explained at this Lean Canvas. So you find different. There's a Business Model Canvas, there's a Marketing Model Canvas, this is the Lean Canvas from Ash Maria, and I find this the best one because this is working for products the best. If you're working in services, probably the Alex Ostervater Business Model Canvas is better because it's more focused on this one. So what you're doing in a Lean Startup, who now is Lean Startup? No? Just kidding. It's just my humor, sorry. You now is Lean Startup? No. You made it. Okay, thank you. You know three Lean Startups. Yeah, so Lean Startup is saying you're basically doing hypothesis, hypothesis experiments all the time, and testing that with real-world people. Okay, before you do any code, you actually find out first who are my target customers. So you write them in here.   And then usually what starts, okay cool, I have it again, let's code this, blah blah blah blah blah. Then, oh, nobody buys my software, why? No, what they say is, now before you do any step further, you take your problems, make a small interview, and go out, call your customers, go to the train station, ask if they're questioning, and ask them, find out, is this a problem? Is this a problem for the people? And then you get a response, and you decide, okay, is this a problem? We want to persevere, so do we want to go on with this? Do we want to pivot? Do we need to change something in a small way, in a big way? You don't need to change like a 180 degree, you don't need to, but you can change small things in your business model, or do you want to quit? And I know if you have an idea it's very hard to quit, it's very hard to quit because you believe in this idea, right? You have to give, you're dreaming about it, and you're waking up and thinking only about this idea, but it's very hard to give up on this one, but you need to, before you lose money, because if you don't solve the problem, you don't find, you don't find, you don't find any revenue out of this. So I will not go through the whole one, because I think I'm just at one minute left, but before, when you found out, okay, this is a problem, then you go the next step. What is my solution? Top three features I want to solve, and you're not coming. You're writing another question. Yeah? Is Agua or Dropbox a part of the strategy? Dropbox is a very easy one. And what's the other one? Agua, the company that I'm in. The question and answer company is great. Quora? Quora. No, because, no, it's Agua, it's the part that will come. I don't know this one, I'm sorry. Okay, so Dropbox is a marionine star. So they made actually, so you're going through, one second I come to this, maybe as a Dropbox example, but you come up with the features, you don't code yet, and then you go back to your castle, and you ask again, if you before had this problem, are these features as a way of solving this problem? And if you find out yes, of course you persevere. If you find out no, you check back why. What can be changed? Or I didn't spend any money yet. Let's go. I'm coming to questions in a moment. Sorry. So Dropbox, this is this way, by saying, one minute, let me just finish it off. Please. I had two questions interrupting me. No, but Dropbox came up actually with this video. They didn't have a line coded. They didn't have any single line coded, but had a video on displaying how Dropbox works without a single line coded. And this was very impressive. I'm stopping here. So if you're interested, let's go at 11 o'clock, I think at Silicon Straits. We can run on your project, Aline Kanmas. We can talk more about agile mindset. We can talk about the golden circle, whatever you want. And I have reserved an hour and I think you can plan even into lunch if you're not that hungry. So we have time more. Let's make it. Do we have time for questions? Are you the moderator now? Yeah. Yeah? I'll give you these two talks. Keep talking. I don't think I need that. So we can. So what was your question? I don't know.