Join us April 8–12, 2024 for our third annual Tech & Society Week—a week of events across campus, exploring various issues at the nexus of technology and society. Whether you’re deeply immersed in these issues, or just curious, there are events for you.
Take a look below for a snapshot of the week. You can also:
- Add our calendar to your Google Calendar (only accessible to those with GU emails)
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Accommodation requests related to a disability should be made by March 29, 2024 to techandsociety@georgetown.edu or to the individual event hosts.
* Asterisked locations are wheelchair accessible. Please refer to this campus map (new window) for list of accessible entrances.
Monday, April 8
11:00 AM – 1:00 PM | Tech & Society Fest
- Event Details: A celebratory launch to Tech & Society Week, featuring all of the centers from across Tech & Society. The event will highlight amazing work happening at the nexus of technology & society across the University: from centers, to degree programs, to fellowships and student groups. Come and plug in (pun intended) to Georgetown’s vibrant Tech & Society ecosystem.
- Host: Tech & Society Initiative
- Location: Mid-Campus Terrace — between Leavey Center and Hariri Building (Main Campus)*
- Registration: This event is open to all — no registration needed.
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM | Tackling Corruption with AI, Lessons from Latin America with Dr. Gastón Pierri
- Event Details: Join us for a talk with Dr. Pierri to explore the capabilities of these tools and the possible risks of their deployment. Dr. Gaston Pierr will present some results of the Peruvian and Brazilian cases regarding the use of AI to track corruption cases in these countries. He can connect the use of technology with governance. Corruption costs close to 4% of GDP to countries around the globe. Gaston Perri’s team at IDB is working with academia and the Latin American public sector to develop machine learning and AI tools to detect and better prosecute corruption cases. In Peru, they are building a system that helps determining causality in corruption cases and determining which ones of the possible cases brought by the citizens to the prosecutors are worth pursuing.
- Location: Student Lounge (Room 104) at Old North (Main Campus)*
- Host: Georgetown Technology Policy Initiative and Latin America and the Caribbean Policy Association
- Registration: RSVP (new window)
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM | Meet the Tech, Ethics & Society Faculty
- Event Details: Come and learn more about Georgetown’s new interdisciplinary program, Technology, Ethics and Society. Already a TES student? Come to connect with the TES faculty, learn about what they’re working on, and hear more about the courses they’re teaching and developing.
- Host: Tech, Ethics and Society
- Location: Healey Family Student Center — Social Room (Main Campus)*
- Registration: RSVP (new window)
5:30 PM – 6:30 PM | Book Talk with Cal Newport: Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
- Event Details: As part of the “What Makes Us Human in the Age of AI” series co-organized by the Georgetown Humanities Initiative and the Center for Digital Ethics, a conversation with NYT best-selling author and Georgetown professor Cal Newport about his work on a groundbreaking new philosophy for pursuing meaningful accomplishment while avoiding overload. Join us to learn how to reject “busyness” as usual and embrace a healthier understanding of productivity.
- Host: Center for Digital Ethics
- Location: Fisher Colloquium — Hariri Building (Main Campus)*
6:45 PM – 7:45 PM | Hot-topics in Tech & Competition Policy Discussion
- Event Details: Join us to discuss the hottest topics in US Tech and Competition Policy with veteran tech policy practitioners of the Federal Trade Commission. Their experience and insight will drive a conversation about current issues in advance of the annual antitrust convention in Washington. This discussion will take place between Amanda Lewis, a former staffer and regulator and current tech policy expert, and Gustav Chiarello, a Tech & Public Policy Fellow.
- Host: Georgetown Technology Policy Initiative
- Location: Old North Building, Room 205 (Main Campus)*
- Registration: RSVP (new window)
Tuesday, April 9
10:30 AM – 12:30 PM | Gnovis Journal Colloquium: Volume 24
- Event Details: Join Gnovis Journal authors for a session to gain a deeper understanding of their academic papers, which explore the intersections of media, technology, race, and power. Then, participate in a Q&A session with the authors, CCT faculty, and other attendees.
- Location: Healey Family Student Center — Social Room (Main Campus)*
- Host: Gnovis @ Communication, Culture & Technology
- Registration: RSVP (new window)
12:00 PM – 1:30 PM | Book Talk: High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs its Economy by Angela Huyue Zhang
- Event Details: In this book talk, Professor Zhang will take us beyond the headlines to unravel the dynamic complexity of China’s regulatory governance. She argues that the crux of the matter lies not in why China needs to regulate but in how it goes about doing so. Drawing insights from her newly released book, “High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy,” she will introduce the dynamic pyramid model of regulation, an analytical framework that demystifies Chinese regulatory governance. Additionally, she will examine the impact of the tech crackdown on the administrative state, the competitive landscape, and global tech rivalry.
- Location: McDonough Faculty Lounge — 5th Floor (Law Center)*
- Host: Institute for Technology Law & Policy, Georgetown Center for Asian Law, and Georgetown China Law Society
- Registration: RSVP (new window)
1:30 PM – 3:30 PM | CCT Carnival of AI
- Event Details: Step right up, step right up to behold the marvels of CCT graduate students as they unveil the mysteries of AI, de-blackbox the wonders of large language models, and reveal the astonishing world of deepfakes, all in a space filled with creative possibilities from AI wallpaper and artifacts to AI buttons and fortune tellers.
- Location: Car Barn 315, CCT Studio, and CCT Lounge (Main Campus)*
- Host: Communication, Culture & Technology
- Registration: This event is open house — no registration needed.
3:00 PM – 5:00 PM | AI & Me: Creativity & Content
- Event Details: AI & Me: Creativity & Content is the third and final installment in new series “AI & Me” hosted by the Massive Data Institute and the Tech & Public Policy program. Panel discussion from 3:00-4:00 PM, followed by a reception with the panelists.
- Location: Copley Formal Lounge (Main Campus)*
- Host: Massive Data Institute and the Tech & Public Policy Program
- Registration: RSVP (new window) (This event is open to the public.)
5:00 PM – 7:00 PM | Decade of Impact: The Beeck Center at 10
- Event Details: For the past 10 years, the Beeck Center has been at the forefront of driving societal change through data, design, technology, and policy. Join us in April as we reflect and celebrate with us! Meet and hear inspiring stories from alumni whose careers were shaped by the Beeck Center in various sectors—public service, philanthropy, media, academia, non-profit, and private industry.
- Location: Main Campus
- Host: Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation
- Registration: This event is invite only.
Wednesday, April 10
1:00 PM – 3:00 PM | New Tech, Old Story: How Understanding the History of Worker Surveillance Should Inform Policies and Regulation
- Event Details: How has workplace surveillance played out in U.S. history? How do we see these historical patterns repeated today? What do these echoes mean for both workers and employers in the context of emerging technologies? The “New Tech, Old Story: How Understanding the History of Worker Surveillance Should Inform Policies and Regulation” panel grounds current anti-surveillance at work debates in the context of history. It will also offer some examples of how workers are organizing against surveillance tools being deployed on them, and some ideas for more effective and historically-informed policy interventions.
- Location: 9th Floor Conference Room at 500 First St NW (Capitol Campus)*
- Host: Center on Privacy and Technology
- Registration: RSVP (new window)
3:00 PM – 4:00 PM | Global Perspectives on AI Governance
- Event Details: UNESCO, the OECD, President Biden’s Executive Order, and the EU AI Act all emphasize the importance of diverse perspectives when analyzing AI’s unique and novel challenges. This event will highlight the international perspectives of experts in our Tech LLM program, who will bring their experience working in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean to bear and provide insights on the critical issue of how regulatory approaches to AI will differ across countries and regions.
- Location: 9th Floor Conference Room at 500 First St NW (Capitol Campus)*
- Host: Institute for Technology Law & Policy
- Registration: RSVP (new window)
4:00 PM – 6:30 PM | Bracing for Impact: AI in the Wild (Distinguished Lecture by danah boyd)
- Event Details: From the moment ChatGPT launched publicly, the hype-making and fear-mongering about Generative AI began. Would AI finally bring about a leisure-filled world with robots doing our bidding? Or would AI destroy humanity? These were but two of the poles of the conversation as public commentators wrestled with how AI might reconfigure work, creativity, politics, and social life. In turn, questions of ethics, equity, responsibility, and accountability quickly followed suit. For well over a year now, countless communities are rushing head-first into recentering their work around AI and its potential implications. Some are pursuing a new goldrush; others simply want to be relevant. In this talk, danah will explore different facets of this cacophonous circus with an eye towards grounding the hype and fear back in the earth. She will examine how earlier phases of AI transformed different work-related practices, discuss how the process and practice of doing ethics during a hype cycle requires abstracting away from the moment, and push the audience to resist deterministic thinking as everyone grapples with an AI-infused world. This event will be followed by a reception.
- Location: Fisher Colloquium — Hariri Building (Main Campus)*
- Host: Center for Digital Ethics
Thursday, April 11
9:30 AM — 10:30 AM | Previewing the Government AI Hire, Use, Buy (HUB) Roundtable Series
- Event Details: The Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation (Beeck Center) and Institute for Technology Law and Policy (Tech Institute) are partnering to lead a series of roundtables examining the government’s use of artificial intelligence (AI). The roundtables will examine the government’s role in hiring AI talent, acquiring AI tools, and putting those tools to use. Representatives from each center will provide an overview of initial roundtable planning and invite audience input on the important questions to consider and voices to include as they carry out the series later this year.
- Location: 6th Floor Lounge at 500 First St NW (Capitol Campus)*
- Host: Center for Security and Emerging Technology, Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation, Institute for Technology Law & Policy
- Registration: RSVP (new window)
11:00 AM — 12:30 PM | Burning Questions: Online Deception and Generative AI
- Event Details: The rise of generative AI raises urgent questions about the integrity of information online, the potential for deceptive content, and the very foundation of public trust in digital spaces. This panel discussion will bring together federal agency experts grappling with the varying implications of AI-generated content for online deception. It will explore what research, data, and evidence are most salient to current policy debates, highlighting existing concerns while also anticipating broader societal and ethical questions that loom over the horizon.
- Location: 9th Floor Conference Room at 500 First St NW (Capitol Campus)*
- Host: Knight–Georgetown Institute
- Registration: RSVP (new window) (This event is open to the public.)
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM | Putting the AI in “Paid”: How Lawyers Can Use and Advise on AI
- Event Details: Current and former students from the Intellectual Property & Information Policy (iPIP) Clinic will lead an interactive panel discussion describing their clinic projects using or advising on artificial intelligence (AI), like face surveillance, ChatGPT, and other forms of generative AI. Law students will leave the workshop equipped to have informed conversations with supervisors, colleagues, and clients about sociotechnical and ethical (colloquially and legally) issues raised by AI systems.
- Location: Room 750 at 500 First St NW (Capitol Campus)*
- Host: Intellectual Property and Information Policy Clinic
- Registration: RSVP (new window) by April 5, 2024
3:00 PM – 5:00 PM | “Into the Woods with Generative AI: Drawing Pathways to Creative Pedagogy” (Creative Workshop with Ethics Lab)
- Event Details: This creative exploratory workshop by Ethics Lab is an invitation to students and faculty across Georgetown to map their perspectives, expertise, and experiences in order to consider: What pathways does Generative AI pave for the future of higher-education?
- Location: Ethics Lab – Healy Hall, 201b (Main Campus)*
- Host: Ethics Lab
- Registration: RSVP (new window)
5:30 PM – 7:00 PM | GUWeCode Coding Party
- Event Details: Georgetown University Women Coders is hosting their annual Coding Party. Join us to participate in coding challenges, compete in an amazing race, win prizes, and meet new faces. There will be coding challenges for newbies, intermediate coders, and advanced coders. Dinner and snacks will be provided. All you need is a computer and an excitement to learn and code!
- Location: Leavey Program Room (Main Campus)*
- Host: Georgetown University Women Coders and the Department of Computer Science
Friday, April 12
9:00 AM – 5:00 PM | Fritz Family Fellows Conference
- Event Details: The Fritz Family Fellows Program is a cross-campus collaboration that aims to cultivate the next generation of leaders with expertise in the social impacts of technology, and build a network of public interest technologists who learn from and support each other’s work. The annual Fritz Family Fellowship Conference is a celebratory event during which fellows will have the opportunity to present their research to their communities, as well as reflect on their research experiences.
- Location: 9th Floor Conference Room at 500 First St NW (Capitol Campus)*
- Host: Fritz Family Fellowship Program
- Registration: RSVP (new window) by March 29, 2024
11:00 AM – 1:30 PM | AI Ethics Showcase
- Event Details: Global Cyber Policy student teams will give presentations demonstrating their AI-generated image, video, or text, explaining how they made it, analyzing the political implications, such as to national security or democracy, and explaining relevant policy recommendations that address these implications. The presentations will be open to those attending Tech & Society Week.
- Location: Room 750 at 500 First St NW (Capitol Campus)*
- Host: Communication, Culture & Technology