How and Why Maintain Human Agency and Digital Sovereignty

AI promises to accelerate human progress, yet its careless use has corroded quality and created power-transferring dependencies. This talk attempts to communicate a clear model of how generative and more conventional AI are built; that they express capital and existing human culture, not personality; how they can best be deployed (with special attention to legal and government contexts); and what all this means for personal, national, and continental sovereignty.

Joanna Bryson is since 2020 Full Professor of Ethics and Technology at Hertie School, a Governance university in Berlin. Globally recognised for her expertise in intelligence (both natural and artificial) and intelligent technology policy, Bryson holds degrees in Social and Computer Sciences from Chicago, Edinburgh, and MIT, and an honorary doctorate from Louvain. Her research appears in venues ranging from Reddit to Science, and her policy voice is heard in the UN, UNESCO, EU, Council of Europe, OSCE, OECD as well as a number of national governments.