Intersection by Kerry Harrison

Responding to the Problems in Tech Using our Abilities

After a successful second year, the Anthropology + Technology Conference was renamed to Response-ability and returned for a third year on Thursday 20 May and Friday 21 May, again online. Speakers were responding to the theme, How do we respond to the problems in tech using our abilities? Our 2021 theme art, Intersection, shown above, was created by creative technologist and artist, Kerry Harrison, using a combination of machine learning and traditional art-making techniques. Read the behind-the-scenes story of how this image came to be.

The innovative programme comprised keynotes, talks, workshops, unconference sessions, a film screening and discussion, online yoga lunchtime classes, and a Netflix Watch Party.

The 2021 Summit again connected speakers and delegates from across the globe, and brought together people from different disciplines and industry sectors to foster discussions on building, designing, and deploying AI (and tech more broadly) responsibly.

The 2021 theme reflected, of course, the new name, Response-ability, which, as Dr. Luke Moffat, one of our 2021 speakers, said in his interview on The Human Show:

“There’s something kind of radically utopian about being response-able rather than being responsible. I find that really hopeful at a time when we need something to hope for, rather than worry about.”

Our first two conferences in 2019 and 2020 highlighted the issues we were facing in the emerging technologies space as well as the critiques. The focus of the 2021 summit was to reflect the fact that we could critique forever but we need to get on and act. As Luke went on to say, which captures the spirit and intention of the Summit perfectly,

“It’s better to find ways of working with what’s happening and limit the harms as much as you possibly can and amplify, as much as you possibly can, the potential for doing things better.”

This was echoed in Thea Snow and Lorenn Ruster’s talk in which they posed the question: How do we proactively enable human flourishing rather than simply focusing on harm minimisation?

Prof Susan HalfordIt was these thoughts of hope, these calls to action, and these ways of reframing the challenges that speakers and attendees thought about throughout the summit. Professor Susan Halford, Co-Director at the Bristol Digital Futures Institute, talked specifically to the theme in her keynote titled, Doing the Future Differently: AI and the Promise of a New ‘Response-ability. Professor Halford posed several thought-provoking questions to delegates, when she asked: What part will we play in making futures? What part will you play? How will you respond with your abilities? How will you cultivate response-ability, in other words, cultivate collective knowing and doing, in the words of Donna Haraway.

Across the two days, speakers from different disciplines and industry sectors delivered talks across these thematic sessions (more information can be found on the Programme page):

  • Engaging Your Creative, Ethical Brain
  • Trusting, auditing, and explaining algorithms
  • Humanising technology
  • Assemblages: algorithms, data privacy, and design
  • AI and the Ethical Quandaries of Care Infrastructures in Africa
  • Doing Ethics
  • Designing for marginalised and forgotten communities
  • Fintech, auditing, and blockchain
  • Data: Privacy and Responsibility
  • Anthropologists in tech and advertising
  • Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC) Presents
  • National biometric identity systems: The case of Aadhaar
  • Circuits of Care: Ageing and Japan’s Robot Revolution

The summit was rounded out with six workshops on the second day that emphasised doing and ensured delegates came away with food for thought and actions to take back to their organisations.

Rakhi Rajani, Chief Digital Officer at Genomics England, took us out of the Summit with a rousing call to action: to look for the things less visible that sit at the intersections in order to create change, to open up the possibilities, to be comfortable with discomfort, to find a common language, to re-imagine. As a community, Rakhi invited us to collectively look for the intersections, to be open to possibilities, to resist the arbitrary disciplinary boundaries that are now holding us back, to resist the labels imposed on us, and to work with rather than do to.

And finally, our Netflix Watch Party: Coded Bias was a relaxing finish to the final day.

Speakers

Welcome: Dawn Walter, Summit Founder.

Keynotes: Professor Susan Halford, University of Bristol, and Rakhi Rajani, Genomics England.

2021 Speakers: Kerry Harrison, Gemma Galdon and Emma Lopez; Agnethe Grøn, Lara Macdonald, Lorenn Ruster and Thea Snow, Jennifer Cearns, Emily Corrigan-Kavanagh, Antti Rannisto, Gitika Saksena, Sophie Adams-Foster; Azza Ahmed, Amina Soulimani, and Min’enhle Ncube; Luke Moffat and Malé Luján Escalante; Sophie Taylor, Maria Bell, Eriol Fox, Mariliis Öeren, Anna Leggett, Sharon Collard, Johannes Lenhard, Priyanka Dass Saharia, Taru Rastas, Gilbert Hill, Daniel Stanley, Lianne Potter, Stephen Paff and Astrid Countee, Tiffany Tivasuradej, Martha King, Clara Collett, and Fiona Dowling, Ken Banks, Subhashish Panigrahi, Priyanka Dass Saharia, and Bidisha Chaudhuri, David Prendergast and Naonori Kodate. 2021 Speakers.

Session Chairs: David Barnard-Wills, Ralph Borland, Corina Enache, Laura Musgrave, Lisa Talia Moretti, Erin B. Taylor, Gigi Taylor, Damini Satija, and Melanie Tan Uy. 2021 Session Chairs.

Workshop Leaders: Peter Svarre, Laura Haapio-Kirk and Jennifer Cearns, Malé Luján Escalante, Vivienne Kuh, Lizzie Harrison, and Luke R. Moffat, Promila Roychoudhury-Koho, Andrea Vianello, and Sanna Vainionpää, and Kerry Harrison. 2021 Workshops.

Programme

The innovative 2021 programme was spread across two days and comprised keynotes, talks, panels, workshops, unconference sessions, a film screening and discussion, online yoga lunchtime classes, and a Netflix Watch Party.

Workshops

Six online workshops were free to all Response-ability Summit 2021 attendees.

  • The Digital Ethics Compass. Led by Peter Svarre.
  • Using Drawing to Understand Technology. Led by Laura Haapio-Kirk and Jennifer Cearns.
  • Dancing With the Trouble of AI. Led by Malé Luján Escalante, Vivienne Kuh, Lizzie Harrison, and Luke R. Moffat.
  • Using Speculative Design to Shape Preferable Futures. Led by Promila Roychoudhury-Koho, Andrea Vianello, and Sanna Vainionpää.
  • Clash of the Zuckerborg vs the Zubot. Led by Phil D. Hall and Rik Lander.
  • Get Creative with Machine Learning. Led by Kerry Harrison.

Summit Videos

Not all the sessions were recorded for privacy or copyright reasons. The talk recordings that are available to watch are here.

Sponsors and Supporters

Our grateful thanks to all our sponsors and supporters, without whom the conference could not have taken place.

Silver Sponsor: Stripe Partners

Bronze Sponsors: Rocketmakers and Bristol Digital Futures Institute, University of Bristol.

Media Partner: The Human Show

Supporters: TechSpark, Yoti, and Danish Design Centre.

Stripe Partners Logo
University of Bristol Digital Futures
Rocketmakers
Yoti