Speaker Interview: Eleanor Drage
Eleanor is a Senior Research Fellow, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, University of Cambridge, and Co-host of The Good Robot Podcast. She will be speaking at the Reclaiming Sovereignty Panel on the first day of the conference.
🪩 DISCO:
What does digital sovereignty mean to you? How do you (try to) live a digitally sovereign life?
🎤 Eleanor Drage:
To me it continues to mean new things everyday because of the challenges that are now emerging at breakneck speeds. As a ‘good tech’ podcast co-host, it’s great to hear how the idea of ‘the digital’ and ‘sovereignty’ do different kinds of work in different contexts. At the moment I’m thinking about the very difficult decisions faced by the Papa Reo project, who want te reo Māori to work with large language learning models (LLMs) and generally be part of the digital world, but also don’t want to give away a digital asset (datafied language) for exploitation.
🪩 DISCO:
As we witness rapid technological breakthroughs in the field of AI, which digital rights do you consider the most endangered?
🎤 Eleanor Drage:
Sometimes the issue of digital rights can be a misnomer, and what we’re looking at are broader systemic issues that are both digital and non-digital. For example, we know that the online privacy of LGBTQ+ people is less guaranteed, but so is their offline privacy. We need to solve problems in both online and offline contexts (though these two categories are interwoven) via a number of different institutions in order to get the digital right.
🪩 DISCO:
What other threats to digital rights are you worried about? Do you have any insights on how we can address them as a society?
🎤 Eleanor Drage:
I’m concerned that Big Tech is hustling the EU for exemption clauses to the EU AI act, but it all goes on behind the scenes with lobbyists and no one ever knows about it, until the clause gets voted in. We need more activists in the European Commision!
🪩 DISCO:
How can events such as DISCO Slovenia 2023 help foster international collaborations and partnerships in promoting digital sovereignty and protecting civil liberties in the interconnected world?
🎤 Eleanor Drage:
Often stories are transnational – for example, I first started looking into the UK’s use of a company called Dataminr to track protests in the UK once I saw that Dataminr had helped police in the USA shut down BLM protests. As companies start to seek contracts abroad, it's so important that we share information about dangerous technologies that are being used in our corners of the world. Soon, they might be used elsewhere. Digital rights and threats to digital justice are actually complex, global stories.
🪩 DISCO:
What obstacles do you consider most critical in our efforts to depatriarchalise and decolonise technology? Can you think of examples of subversive uses of technology that can help us reshape it?
🎤 Eleanor Drage:
We need to get public opinion onside by continuing to tell stories and connect them with broad social concerns. I’m still learning how to communicate these ideas in ways that tug on people’s heartstrings. We can also integrate decolonial work into AI legislation. That’s what I’m doing on the Ammagamma project, which is building an online assessment tool helping companies fulfill the EU’s obligations – but injected with anti-racist, queer and feminist ideas. Also, we need something to aim for – I read the SF of Aliette de Bodard or other decolonial SF writers for inspiration!
🪩 DISCO:
What advice would you give to individuals on how to responsibly navigate the online environment in regard to their privacy and digital rights? Are there any specific tools that you would recommend?
🎤 Eleanor Drage:
Check your country’s version of Companies House (the UK government agency that maintains the register of companies that it enters into contracts with) to know what software companies have got government contracts, and which departments they’re being used in. The Citizens is also a great resource for digital / data rights journalism.
🪩 DISCO:
Can you recommend a book that we should all read before the conference, a podcast that we should subscribe to and/or a website that we should bookmark?
🎤 Eleanor Drage:
Do subscribe to The Good Robot podcast, now on YouTube as well as Spotify! We’re doing ‘hot takes’ that are for a broader audience.
Aside from that, for any French speakers I love Les Couilles sur la Table, a podcast about masculinities. I’m re-reading Simondon’s On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects at the moment, and a wonderful book my colleague gave me about clubbing culture.