Scientific advances benefit from collaboration between researchers, but what happens when material, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) is controversial and important to a nation’s national security? Is there a middle ground between sharing information and denying access? How can we regulate cooperation?

Join WorldBoston for a timely discussion of this topic with Tim Ritchie, President of the Museum of Science. This program will feature an expert presentation, live audience Q&A, and time for networking and discussion with other globally-oriented participants.

Since 2004, Ritchie has served as the president of science centers across the country including, McWane Science Center and the Tech Interactive, where he has followed his passion to serve his community with a vision to galvanize the public’s appreciation of the role science plays in our daily lives, and the opportunities it can create for us all.

Alberto Vasallo, III hosts a conversation with local leaders about ways that Latinos are having an impact on economies in the Boston region.

Alberto Vasallo, III hosts a candid and unfiltered conversation with four Latino leaders doing good work in the Boston region.

Join us for a community conversation that amplifies local voices from Boston and beyond. Held once a month at GBH’s studio at the Boston Public Library, GBH Amplifies will feature a cast of rotating hosts from local media, community organizations, and more.

Josh Miller-Lewis co-founded More Perfect Union, a non-profit advocacy journalism organization, and now serves as Senior Editorial Director. More Perfect Union was recently nominated for two News & Documentary Emmy Awards and is one of the fastest growing new digital outlets of the last decade.

Cambridge Forum continues its investigation into the impact of AI: Servant or Master?  with FEEDING THE MACHINE on Thursday, December 19.  The proliferation of A.I. offers seemingly limitless implications for the future, however what is less known about, is the hidden human cost of the labor that feeds this machine - and it is horrific.   

Silicon Valley has sold us the illusion that artificial intelligence is a frictionless technology that will bring wealth and prosperity to humanity. But hidden beneath this smooth surface lies the grim reality of a precarious global workforce of millions, laboring under often appalling conditions to make A.I. possible.

Social media content and AI training data are processed in outsource centers in Kenya and Uganda and the global south, where long hours, low pay and exposure to very disturbing material is the norm. The daily demands of the job are inhuman, content moderators for companies like Meta are expected to watch hours of suicides, rapes and torture  -“almost every day… you normalize things that are just not normal.” 

The authors of Feeding the Machine, James Muldoon, Mark Graham, and Callum Cant are based at Oxford University at the Oxford Internet Institute. They describe A.I. as “an extraction machine that feeds off humanity’s collective effort and intelligence, churning through ever-larger datasets to power its algorithms.”  The purpose of their investigation was, “to give voice to the people whom A.I. exploits, revealing how their dangerous, low-paid labor is connected to longer histories of gendered, racialized & colonial exploitation.” 

Muldoon, our guest speaker, is an Associate Professor of Management at the University of Essex.  Muldoon, Graham and Cant conducted hundreds of interviews during countless hours of fieldwork collected over more than a decade. The book describes the lives of the workers who are deliberately concealed from view, and the power structures that determine their future. The examples move from California, to Iceland, to Kenya, to Mexico and beyond, featuring stories from different composite characters. The data annotator in northern Uganda clicking through endless footage for $1.16 an hour; to the artist whose voice has been sold online; to the engineer pressured to deliver an imperfect final product, without ethical guidelines.  

The book provides an important and overlooked examination of the network that maintains an exploitative system, revealing the untold truth about the excessively high human cost of creating A.I.

Muldoon will be joined in the conversation by Josh Miller-Lewis, co-founder and senior editorial director of More Perfect Union.

James Muldoon is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Management at the Essex Business School, a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute and Head of Digital Research at the Autonomy think tank.

Join Ford Hall Forum at Suffolk University, in partnership with Brandeis University Press and American Ancestors for a wide-ranging discussion about a fascinating period of global history as experts from both sides of the Atlantic discuss maritime commerce--the innovation, benefits, and damages of the spice trade.

Learn how the drive of sea captains, worldwide consumers’ taste, and technical innovations—improvements in ship design, compasses, and mapping— enabled navigation across unprecedented distances, from such embarkation points as Venice, Amsterdam, Lisbon to the exotic ports of Malacca, Goa, Bombay, where they tracked down elusive spices. Such travels impacted art, literature, and science worldwide; and they were often disastrous for local populations, who were frequently exploited as slave plantation labor. This wide-ranging account of a fascinating period of global history uses original maps and contemporary artists’ views to tell the story of how each port developed individually; while also encouraging us to consider contrasting points of view of the benefits and the damages of the maritime spice trade.

Nicholas Nugent has 40 years’ experience researching and reporting for BBC World Service. He is the author of numerous books, including the biography, Rajiv Gandhi Son of a Dynasty(BBC Books) and Vietnam: The Second Revolution. Over the years Nugent has spent his spare time building a valuable archive of original maps.