More than one year into the pandemic, we follow up with thought leaders in the fields of digitalization and AI – Dr. Gesche Joost, Professor for Design Research at the Berlin University of the Arts, and Dr. Mona Sloane of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University – on where things stand when it comes to digitalization and the digital divide. Has the pandemic helped close the gap, or has it exacerbated inequalities? We’ll explore this question domestically and internationally.
Join the American Council and Germany and 1014 on Clubhouse or Zoom as we continue the conversation with Dr. Gesche Joost and Dr. Mona Sloane
Gesche Joost is Professor for Design Research at the Berlin University of the Arts and since 2005 heading the Design Research Lab. With international partners, she conducts research and development projects in the areas of human-computer interaction, wearable computing, as well as user-centered design and participation. Until 2010, she was a junior professor for Interaction Design & Media at the Technical University of Berlin in cooperation with Telekom Innovation Laboratories. As a visiting professor, she taught Gender and Design at the HAWK Hildesheim and was a distinguished research fellow at UTS Sydney in 2014. In 2009, she received the young talent award for science from the mayor of Berlin.
She acts in various committees, amongst them on the board of DGTF e.V. (German Society for Design Theory and Research) and on the board of the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes). She is co-founder of the nonprofit company Calliope engaging in digital education for school children in Germany. From 2014 to 2018, she was appointed as a Digital Champion for the EU commission. Since 2015, she is a member of the Supervisory Board of SAP SE. Since 2018, she is a member of the Supervisory board of ING DiBa AG and Ottobock SE & Co. KGaA.
Mona Sloane is a sociologist working on inequality in the context of AI design and policy. She frequently publishes and speaks about AI, ethics, equitability, and policy in a global context. She is a Fellow with NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge (IPK), where she convenes the Co-Opting AI series and co-curates The Shift series. She also is a Senior Research Scientist at the NYU Center for Responsible AI, an Adjunct Professor at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, and is part of the inaugural cohort of the Future Imagination Collaboratory (FIC) Fellows at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is the technology editor of Public Books and is a fellow at The GovLab. Her most recent project is Terra Incognita: Mapping NYC’s New Digital Public Spaces in the COVID-19 Outbreak which she leads as principal investigator. She currently also serves as principal investigator of the Procurement Roundtables project, a collaboration with Dr. Rumman Chowdhury (Director of Machine Learning Ethics, Transparency & Accountability at Twitter, Founder of Parity), and John C. Havens (IEEE Standards Association) that is focused on innovating AI procurement to center equity and justice. She also works with Emmy Award-winning journalist and NYU journalism professor Hilke Schellmann on hiring algorithms, auditing, and new tools for investigative journalism and research on AI. With Dr. Matt Statler (NYU Stern), she is also leading the Public Interest Technology Convention and Career Fair project that looks to bring together students and organizations building up the public interest technology space. She is also affiliated with the Tübingen AI Center in Germany where she leads a 3-year federally funded research project on the operationalization of ethics in German AI startups. She has written for The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, OneZero Medium, and other outlets. She holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science and has completed fellowships at the University of California, Berkeley, and at the University of Cape Town
