AI and Freedom of Expression:
I’m collaborating with human rights researcher and expert Bojana Kostic. We are working on a small project about explainable AI, AI in everyday life, and how AI affects personal privacy, freedom of expression and public deliberation, including media and journalism. This project is funded by OSCE RFoM SAIFE, an international organization that does high policy work in this field, trying to develop policy recommendations to safeguard freedom of expression and media pluralism in the context of AI and FOE (freedom of expression).
We are interviewing experts over video, and embedding the videos into the essay, which will be a website. We are looking for a designer to help with the website, as well as help designing exercises we want participants to do (maybe it’s changing all of your FB info, or wearing certain kinds of face masks to avoid algorithmic detection, etc). We’re hoping to start in really early January figuring out the exercises. I’m doing UX for the website- so the designer would be making icons, maybe a visualization, etc. We imagine this is a one or two page website max, and about 2,500 words for the essay. So graphic design help would include layouts, etc. Our budget is 1,000 euros for the graphic designer.
Mapping Surveillance in New Orleans
The second project is mapping the surveillance apparatus in New Orleans, LA. Myself, and Michael Isacc Stein, a reporter with the Lens (a criminal justice publication in New Orleans, LA) received a small grant from the Investigative Journalism Fund.
We are creating a 3 to 4 page website on the surveillance system in New Orleans. The first would track how the system was built and how the city managed to do it outside the typical budget process. The second would review instances of misuse of the city’s system, the lack of regulation in Louisiana and a look forward to probable future conflicts. The third would survey all the city’s surveillance resources (including camera location data the city was just forced to release by court order) to create maps and resources for residents to understand what is being watched and where.
We are aiming to create graphs on how money is spent and by whom (so who funds this), and potentially an interactive map or graphic of known surveillance cameras in New Orleans (this is published by the Louisiana ACLU), and potentially graphics depicting surveillance mechanisms (or helping cut out photos to show different surveillance cameras and tools). We’d need some light website UI help, I’ll be doing UX design on the project as well as research.
We are aiming to release the story in February.
Our budget is $1,000 USD for a graphic designer.
Let me know if you know of any students who would be interested in this!
Best,
Caroline