Since stepping into the role of U.N. Human Rights Office’s first chief of digital technology and human rights earlier this year, Wafa Ben-Hassine has been thinking about ways to better work with decisionmakers on AI. “Instead of just writing endless papers that collect dust, what can we actually do to talk to companies about how they build this technology and to pressure governments to hold them accountable?” asks Wafa Ben-Hassine. “The problem now is that there's such a lack of accountability and a lack of transparency in how the companies operate, and it’s just getting worse.”
Thus she’s setting about to do “a lot of campaigning, a lot of pressure, a lot of meetings, building relationships and trust” to persuade U.N. member states “to use the tools that they have at hand to allow for greater accountability.” Specifically, she’s concerned with AI trampling on privacy, freedom of expression, and “the right to have a decent life.” She’s not new to these questions, coming to Geneva after over five years at the Omidyar Network, a social-change philanthropy, in Washington, D.C. In that role, she co-founded Humanity AI, a coalition of foundations that have pooled some $500 million to grant to projects that support humane deployments of the technology.
“I really want my section to be the authority on human rights online,” she says. “I want people to come to us to be able to ask really tough questions around child safety and privacy. I want different actors in this space to feel they can trust the expertise and guidance my section produces.”