About this newsletter
Humane AI newsletter was founded in 2017 by me, Roya Pakzad, a technology and human rights researcher and advocate, as well as an electrical engineer.
What topics do I cover?
The societal impacts of artificial intelligence
Surveillance technologies
Algorithmic accountability, impact assessment, and auditing
Data protection
Social media governance
The human rights implications of digital technologies on marginalized and vulnerable communities beyond the US and Western EU
Human-rights-centered technical design, value-sensitive design
In what format do I write?
The newsletter was born from my passion for technology and human rights, as well as my interest in writing in a simple storytelling style.
This newsletter goes beyond providing bullet-point links to news articles. Instead, I use my human rights analysis and technical expertise to examine issues in depth and structure the newsletter around specific themes. To get an idea of what I mean, you can check out some of my previous editions: Technology, Pregnancy, and Parenthood, From polygraphs to modern lie detectors, When AI Meets Nowruz, Technology and Human Rights… in Comics!
About Me, Roya Pakzad
I am the founder and director of Taraaz, a research and advocacy organization working at the intersection of technology and human rights. I am also an affiliated scholar at UC Berkeley’s CITRIS Policy Lab. My work centers on researching human rights implications of digital technologies, corporate accountability, and human rights-centered design.
Previously, I served as a Research Associate and Project Leader in Technology and Human Rights at Stanford University’s Global Digital Policy Incubator (GDPi). I also worked with Stanford’s program in Iranian Studies on the role of information and communication technologies and human rights in Iran. In 2019 I was a resident fellow on Artificial Intelligence at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center. Prior to entering the human rights field, I was an electrical engineer at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).
I hold degrees from Shahid Beheshti University in Iran (B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering), the University of Southern California (M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering) and Columbia University (M.A. in Human Rights Studies). I was born and raised in Tehran, Iran and currently live in Santa Cruz, California.
Check out my CV.
About Taraaz
Taraaz is a research and advocacy non-profit, working at the intersection of technology and human rights. Our services include: conducting Human rights impact assessments informed by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights’ methodology; developing educational material and guiding tools to audit and evaluate human rights impacts of digital products and services and to mitigate potential adverse impacts; and producing cross-disciplinary research papers and policy reports on topics including but not limited to human rights implications of technical designs, the digital divide between and within countries, discriminatory outcomes of algorithmic decision making systems on vulnerable groups, and more.
Our partners and clients include the Ford Foundation, Amnesty International, UC Berkeley, Meta, OpenAI, BSR, Luminate, Ethical Resolve, Small Media Foundation, the Miaan Group, Digital Medusa, The Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics.
Check out Taraaz’s website.
