Biographies - setting the scene
Joanna Bryson
Associate Professor, University of Bath
Joanna Bryson is a Reader (tenured Associate Professor) at the University of Bath. She has broad academic interests in the structure and utility of intelligence, both natural and artificial. Venues for her research range from reddit to Science.
She is best known for her work in systems AI and AI ethics, both of which she began during her PhD in the 1990s, but she and her colleagues publish broadly, in biology, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, cognitive science, and politics. Current projects include “The Limits of Transparency for Humanoid Robotics” funded by AXA Research, and “Public Goods and Artificial Intelligence” (with Alin Coman of Princeton University’s Department of Psychology and Mark Riedl of Georgia Tech) funded by Princeton’s University Center for Human Values.
Other current research includes understanding the causality behind the correlation between wealth inequality and political polarization, generating transparency for AI systems, and research on machine prejudice deriving from human semantics.
She holds degrees in Psychology from Chicago and Edinburgh, and in Artificial Intelligence from Edinburgh and MIT. At Bath she founded the Intelligent Systems research group (one of four in the Department of Computer Science) and heads their Artificial Models of Natural Intelligence.
Dunja Mijatović
Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner
Dunja Mijatović was elected Commissioner for Human Rights on 25 January 2018 by the Parliamentary Assembly and took up her position on 1 April 2018. She is the fourth Commissioner, succeeding Nils Muižnieks (2012-2018), Thomas Hammarberg (2006-2012) and Alvaro Gil-Robles (1999-2006).
National of Bosnia and Herzegovina, she has been working to promote and protect human rights for the past two decades, thus acquiring extensive knowledge in the field of international monitoring, in particular as regards freedom of expression.
Prior to her appointment as Commissioner for Human Rights, she has served as OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media (2010-2017), Director of Broadcast of the Communications Regulatory Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina (2001-2010), Chair of the European Platform of Regulatory Agencies (2007–2010) and of the Council of Europe's Group of Specialists on Freedom of Expression and Information in Times of Crisis (2005-2007).
Dunja Mijatović has regularly given lectures in national and international fora and has been awarded several human rights prizes. She has also being active in supporting NGO activities in the field of human rights education and asylum.
David Kaye
UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression
David Kaye is a professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in June 2014, he is the global body’s principal monitor for freedom of expression issues worldwide. His thematic reporting has addressed, among other things, growing repression of freedom of expression globally, encryption and anonymity, the protection of whistleblowers and journalistic sources, the roles and responsibilities of private Internet companies, the regulation of online content by social media and search companies and the ways in which Artificial Intelligence technologies implicate human rights issues. He began his legal career with the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and former member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law.