Speaker Interview: Sander van der Waal
🪩 DISCO:
What does digital sovereignty mean to you? How do you (try to) live a digitally sovereign life?
🎤 Sander van der Waal:
To me, digital sovereignty is about choosing freely where to go and what to see online. Having a meaningful choice about what to share about myself and what to keep private. At the moment we are far away from that situation, sadly. But I’m optimistic that the need for digital sovereignty is being felt more clearly now, in different parts of Europe.
🪩 DISCO:
As we witness rapid technological breakthroughs in the field of AI, which digital rights do you consider the most endangered?
🎤 Sander van der Waal:
Freedom from discrimination and the right to privacy I feel are most under threat. Adoption of facial recognition software by private companies and governments severely undermines anyone’s ability to choose what to keep private and when to be anonymous. Skewed training data for AI systems in general exacerbate discrimination we encounter and know historically, rather than addressing it.
🪩 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?
🎤 Sander van der Waal:
More technology, more algorithms, more AI is still seen as solutions to today’s problems, but what’s equally important is understanding the limitations of technology itself and ensuring it’s deployed with our societal interests at heart, rather than those of the private corporations. For example, in the Netherlands nurses spend 30-40% of their time on administrative tasks. AI could be deployed to lessen the burden on those nurses so they can do the work they love. Instead, what we see is robots being developed to take over nurses’ interactions with patients. Without having a debate on whether that’s the society we want. I think that should be the conversation first.
🪩 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?
🎤 Sander van der Waal:
It’s a great opportunity for people from outside Slovenia to better understand the situation there and discuss potentials for collaboration. With the new EU elections coming up next year I think it would be great to strengthen collaboration on these topics from across the EU, so we can strategise on what we believe the next European Commission can do to address these concerns, building on what happens across Europe already.
🪩 DISCO:
What would you consider responsible and inclusive engineering? What are the key ethical considerations that should guide the development and deployment of emerging technologies to ensure digital sovereignty and safeguard human rights?
🎤 Sander van der Waal:
Understanding the technology is not neutral, but has always embedded values in it is key. We’ve developed the Public Stack to help address these concerns.
🪩 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?
🎤 Sander van der Waal:
For each big tech tool alternatives exist. It’s mostly a matter of trying it out and making conscious choices to use them. I often suggest this website if you’re looking for what you can use.
🪩 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?
🎤 Sander van der Waal:
A few classic books come to mind:
Atlas of AI by Kate Crawford and The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff.
We co-organised the PublicSpaces conference in June which has many interesting sessions published on the Peertube site.
🪩 DISCO:
Which disco tune should we definitely add to the opening party playlist?
🎤 Sander van der Waal:
I’ll think about that one … :)