Disclaimer: No AI was used in the writing of this article.
I can’t believe it’s been more than a year since Technologists for Democracy got off the ground! We’ve already had a successful campaign, been featured in national news media and hosted our own events like a local People’s AI Consultation.
We got our start when a few community members raised the issue of Magna International starting a pilot for their automated food delivery vehicle in Toronto. Magna was intentionally recording the faces of pedestrians because they believed it would help their vehicles drive better, but we believe this was an invasion of privacy.
Other delivery bots have shown that it’s possible to operate while respecting privacy. There’s also a difference between taking selfies with other people incidentally in the background, and regularly recording videos of the public and affixing times, locations and detected faces to those videos (a dataset advertisers would absolutely love). And I haven’t even talked about the potential labour and traffic issues these vehicles could cause!
So we brought the issue up to the councillors at Toronto City Hall, who were very receptive, and also contacted Magna directly with our concerns. They didn’t provide any useful answers, but eventually they ended the pilot early and we took the victory!
I felt that it was important to leverage this single issue into a bigger movement — to bring the expertise of technologists together to advocate for an alternative, better future that we know is possible. To that end, we’ve tried to structure TfD in a way that represents our values: decentralized, as flat as possible, and democratic.
I like innovation. I’m a big fan of air conditioning and the internet. I’m a machine learning engineer. But innovation by itself isn’t always a good thing. In a world where enshittification is increasingly the norm, and certain politicians and executives have revealed their true colours, I wish it weren’t so controversial to say that I don’t want to innovate on how to exploit people more effectively.
Thanks to all the people who have contributed to TfD in the past year. For some highlights, I’m very glad that people have stepped up to host a Jane’s Walk, a Film Club series, and our burgeoning campaign on Waymo, not to mention all the research, interviews and background work that is ongoing.
Here’s to many more successful years of Technologists for Democracy!
– Khasir
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