Data Curation from the Margin: How Rural Bangladeshi Communities Preserve, Interpret and Visualise Data 

Team: Abdullah Hasan Safir, Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat, Sharifa Sultana and Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed

[This will be a chapter in an edited collection on 'Putting Data Justice in Context' (Publisher TBD, forthcoming), details will be added later]

The Power and Politics of AI for Climate Action: Who is in Control?

Team: Abdullah Hasan Safir and Sanjay Sharma 

[Selected for publication in a special issue on 'Data, Platforms, and AI for Development' in Big Data and Society Journal, details will be added later] 

Data, Annotation, and Meaning-Making: Marginalizing Faith through Convenient Infrastructuring and Collapsing Contexts

Team:  Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat, Abdullah Hasan Safir, Ruhul Amin and Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed

[Under review, details will be added later] 

Workshop: Many Worlds of Ethics: Ethical Pluralism in CSCW

Team: Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat, Abdullah Hasan Safir and many other Global South researchers

Synopsis: This project was an effort to embrace ethical pluralism within CSCW, particularly to govern AI and data-driven systems. We organised a day-long hybrid workshop in CSCW and invite researchers and practitioners to initiate conversations centered around three themes: (a) foregrounding ethical diversities, (b) adapting diverse ethics, and (c) addressing challenges, barriers, and limitations associated with incorporating plural ethics into CSCW. Find the details of  the workshop here and the extended abstract here.

Conference: Many Worlds of AI 2023

Team: Tomasz Hollanek, Abdullah Hasan Safir and others at LCFI

Synopsis: This conference interrogated how an intercultural approach to ethics can inform the processes of conceiving, designing, and regulating artificial intelligence (AI). It took place at Jesus College, Cambridge, from the 26th to the 28th of April 2023, and was organised by the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at University of Cambridge with the Center for Science and Thought at the University of Bonn. We worked for decolonising AI ethics and practices in different ways in this conference:

• Ethics of Organising:  As members of the organization and scientific committee, we worked hard with our partners in India (Ashoka University) and China (Berggruen Institute’s China Center at Peking University), to reach communities that might not have otherwise considered presenting their work at a conference focused on “intercultural approaches to AI ethics” taking place at Cambridge. There were researchers from 28 countries including the ones from the Global South and 55% of them identified as she/hers. See details here.

• Curating a panel on AI from the Margin: This panel included Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat, Sharifa Sultana and Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed as speakers and focused on local and situated ‘knowledges’ around AI based on the diverse oral culture, myths, legends, wisdom, and visual and performative art practices in Bangladesh. We received wonderful questions from audience about how ‘intelligence’ and associated ethics which are conceptualized by the local communities could be accommodated in designing scalable AI technologies and policies. See details here. 

• Digital Proceedings: We curated this repository with presentations in the conference ranging from the ethics of ‘generative’ AI to colonial histories of tech in India, from Buddhist approaches to tech ethics to Indigenous perspectives on AI. We highlighted how legal scholars, philosophers, policymakers, and developers try to think AI ethics through the intercultural lens. Each presentation is assigned to a general regional category.  The proceedings can be navigated using hashtags that cut across the broader categories, denoting specific stakeholders, particular countries, or specialists themes.  Access the proceedings from here.

Decolonising effort as a student at CIM, Warwick

• CIM Annual Student Conference: Digital in a Post-Pandemic World, 2022, University of Warwick: Organizing Committee Member and Chair in two consecutive sessions related to AI Ethics

• Presented paper on “Talking Digital Divide Using Data Science Techniques”, in a Workshop on ‘Big Data and AI from the Global South’ at FaccT conference, 2022

• Mozilla Festival, 2022 (Online) Volunteer, Workshop on Decolonizing AI 

• Decolonising and Diversifying Working Group, CIM, University of Warwick Committee Member, 2021-22