Research to Policy Engagement Initiative Interactive Discussion: Technology, Design, and Policy for Equity

MIT’s Technology and Policy Program and its Research to Policy Engagement Initiative aims to to create a community of researchers who can learn, apply, and contribute to developing best practices in bridging knowledge to action on societal challenges, across experiences in different research domains.  The initiative seeks to connect researchers from diverse disciplines, policymakers and other stakeholders interested in the implementation aspects of technology by creating a discussion space for technology-policy interfaces.

Please join us for the kick-off meeting and the first in a series of interactive discussions on cross-cutting issues linking science, technology, and practice.

Discussion #1: Technology, Design and Policy for Equity, organized by Dr. Poushali Maji, majip@mit.edu, and Dr. Katlyn Turner (katlyn@media.mit.edu)

In this kick-off interactive discussion, we will be exploring how the design of technologies and their interaction with policy has implications for societal equity. We’ll draw examples from large scale technologies within the global energy sector, small-scale applications such as household cooking fuel in India, and computing applications such as and AI voice and facial recognition technology. Examples highlight how implementation of specific technologies relates to structural and economic disparity and entrenched societal structures such as gender or racial hierarchies. We will then move on to group discussions of further examples and seek out examples of technologies designed to address equity challenges.