Civil Rights in the Age of AI

The civil rights movement won its cases against decisions a human made and could be made to explain. The next generation of those decisions, on who gets the apartment, the loan, the interview, the flag at the airport, the second look from a police department, is being made by systems whose owners argue they cannot explain them. Muslims in America already know what it is to be sorted by a watchlist.

Who this is for

Lawyers, organizers, policymakers, technologists who want to be on the right side of the next case, and anyone whose community has been made transparent to systems that remain opaque to them.

On the table

• What does disparate impact look like when the training data itself carries the history?
• Which existing laws already reach algorithmic decisions, and where are the gaps a legislature has to fill?
• What can a community demand from a city that buys surveillance software with its taxes?

You'll leave with

• Where organizing has already forced a system to be withdrawn, and what it took
• The legal theories that are working today, and the ones being tested
• How to turn a declaration into a claim that can be filed