Image

Please join us on Wednesday, April 20th for a talk with Anna-Maria Osula, visiting scholar from TalTech. At this event co-sponsored by Stanford University Libraries, Anna-Maria will be introducing her research on private sector initiatives to develop and promote cyber norms of behavior.

Research Overview:

Given the multistakeholder nature of running the Internet and governing information and communication technologies, nation-states are not the only entities interested in shaping norms of behavior for cyberspace. Non-state actors are directly impacted by any decision on international norms in cyberspace. They are also expected to behave as responsible actors, being tied by the agreements negotiated by states at the UN platform. This means that non-state actors are involved in building and promoting norms and also playing a role in their interpretation and implementation. Anna-Maria will talk about her research project where she analyzes the private sector involvement in advancing cyber norms in international fora such as the United Nations.

Bio:

Anna-Maria Osula, currently a Global Digital Governance Fellow at Stanford University, is a senior researcher at Tallinn University of Technology and a senior policy officer at Guardtime. Her current research focus is cyber diplomacy and international law applicable to cyber operations. She also serves as a research fellow at Masaryk University under the project “Cyber Security, Cyber Crime and Critical Information Infrastructures Center of Excellence.” Previously, she worked as a legal researcher at the NATO CCDCOE, undertaking projects on national cyber security strategies, international organizations, international criminal cooperation, and norms. In addition to a Ph.D. in law from the University of Tartu, she holds an LLM degree in IT law from Stockholm University.

Image

Join us on Tuesday, April 19 from 12 PM - 1 PM PT for a book talk on “The Loop: How Technology is Creating a World without Choices and How to Fight Back” featuring Jacob Ward from NBC News, in conversation with Nate Persily of the Cyber Policy Center.  This weekly seminar series is jointly organized by the Cyber Policy Center’s Program on Democracy and the Internet and the Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber Initiative.

In The Loop: How Technology is Creating a World without Choices and How to Fight Back, Jake argues that AI is about to do to our ability to make decisions for ourselves what Google maps did to our ability to navigate. Drawing on interviews with over 100 scientists and 10-years of front-line reporting from the cutting edge of behavior-shaping technology, Jake’s book is a warning about our growing reliance on AI, and an encouragement to protect the best parts of being human.

Jacob Ward is a correspondent for NBC News, reporting for the TODAY show, Nightly News, MSNBC, and NBC News Now on the unanticipated consequences of science and technology in our lives. From 2018 to 2019, Jacob was a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, along with its partner the Berggruen Institute, which gave him space and companionship on the Stanford campus to write The Loop, his book about the effects of artificial intelligence on human decision making, with Hachette Book Group. Between 2016 and 2020, Jacob hosted a landmark four-hour television series on the science and implications of bias. Prior to that, he was a television correspondent for Al Jazeera, covering science and technology in the US and around the world. He was also editor-in-chief of Popular Science, the world’s largest science and technology publication.

Nathaniel Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, with appointments in the departments of Political Science, Communication, and FSI.  Prior to joining Stanford, Professor Persily taught at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and as a visiting professor at Harvard, NYU, Princeton, the University of Amsterdam, and the University of Melbourne. Professor Persily’s scholarship and legal practice focus on American election law or what is sometimes called the “law of democracy,” which addresses issues such as voting rights, political parties, campaign finance, redistricting, and election administration. He has served as a special master or court-appointed expert to craft congressional or legislative districting plans for Georgia, Maryland, Connecticut, New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.  He also served as the Senior Research Director for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. His current work, for which he has been honored as a Guggenheim Fellow, Andrew Carnegie Fellow, and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, examines the impact of changing technology on political communication, campaigns, and election administration.  He is codirector of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, Stanford Program on Democracy and the Internet, and the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project, which supported local election officials in taking the necessary steps during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide safe voting options for the 2020 election. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a commissioner on the Kofi Annan Commission on Elections and Democracy in the Digital Age.

In this talk, prominent political activist Sanaa Seif and award-winning journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous will discuss the current political conditions in Egypt, the massive expansion of the carceral state under the rule of Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi and the country’s role within the geopolitical shifts reshaping the region. At the heart of the conversation will be the newly released book, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, authored by Seif's brother Alaa Abdel-Fattah, one of the most high-profile political prisoners in Egypt. The book will be available for purchase at the event.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Image

Image

This event is co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University.​

Image