Technology shapes how human beings experience the world

We live at a critical stage in human history. The values and rules we choose to shape technology design in the next few years will in turn shape how human beings experience the world

The Human Technology Institute (HTI) at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) was officially launched on October 18th. The following is a speech from Professor Nicholas Davis on why the HTI is dedicated to building a future that applies human values to new technology.

"In March of 2020, my wife Isobel and I contracted the first Covid-19 strain in Switzerland. The country known for running like clockwork had ground to a halt, and the health system was in chaos. I’ve never felt so sick in my life.

We felt truly helpless – the doctors who scanned my chest in a pop up tent could only say "the good news is that we know it’s definitely Covid and not a heart issue. The bad news is that no treatment is available. Come back if you feel like you’re drowning."   

The pandemic demonstrated very personally to me that being human means we all share critical vulnerabilities. You or a family member may have gone through something similar recently.

In my mind, our collective experience of the global pandemic is a telling example of why innovation needs to be tightly coupled to the public good. 

This really came home to me when, a couple of months later, recovered though still a bit out of breath, I was working with the Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunisation, GAVI, to lead their innovation strategy. 

Our goal was to leverage promising new technologies, including AI, to rapidly provide Covid vaccines to more than 2 billion people around the world who otherwise would have no way of accessing or affording them. We hoped thereby to prevent a good proportion of them from having to go through what Bel and I experienced, or far worse.

Unfortunately, with vaccine technologies, as with innovations in so many areas, the benefits tend to accumulate to the well off, and the threats are experienced disproportionately by the vulnerable. 

Aside from the sheer challenge of competing with rich countries for vaccine supply, many of the enabling technologies we supported local stakeholders to evaluate came with many hidden costs -  accuracy claims that were completely unverified in on the ground contexts, unrealistic infrastructure requirements, vendor lock in, data leaks or the potential for abuse by authorities.  

HTI exists to challenge this unfair distribution in the benefits and risks of powerful tech. And the way we do this is through partnership-driven action.

Advisory partners

It's in that spirit that we are so pleased to have joined forces with HTI’s three advisory partners: 

• Gilbert + Tobin, with special thanks to Danny Gilbert, Sam Nickless and Simon Burns; 
• KPMG Australia with Andrew Yates, Richard Boele, Dorothy Hisgrove and Jessica Wyndham; and 
• Atlassian, with David Masters, Anna Jaffe, Stephan Curiskis and Izzy Kohout. 

Human technology "labs"

We work with these and other partners across three human technology “labs” focused on the real-world application of practical insights to support accurate, accountable, fair and fit-for-purpose tech.   

Our skills lab democratises knowledge about emerging technologies, giving people who need it the minimum viable understanding required to make good strategic decisions.  

Our tools lab is focused on creating and disseminating the technical approaches and frameworks needed to surface bias in AI, embed data ethics and assess organisational maturity when it comes to governance.  

Our policy lab – exemplified in our recently published model law on facial recognition technology – is focused on designing and promoting the rules we need right now to both protect our rights and unleash innovation that works for everyone. 

Project partners

In addition to our advisory partners, we’re privileged to be working closely across our labs with project partners who have committed to test and scale our ideas in exciting, new directions.  

Here I’d like to recognise Mfanwy Wallwork and Veronica Rios at LexisNexis; Clementine Wong at Transport for NSW; Belinda Dennett and Lee Hickin at Microsoft, and Burcu Kilic and her team at the Minderoo Foundation. 

I also wanted to recognise the incredible support that UTS has provided in backing all of us at HTI to embark on this journey, with special thanks to Lesley Hitchens, Verity Firth, Glenn Wightwick and of course our Vice Chancellor, Andrew Parfitt.   

I’m convinced that we live at a critical stage in human history. The values and rules we choose to shape technology design in the next few years will in turn shape how human beings experience the world for a generation and likely more.  

On behalf of Ed and the entire HTI team, thank you all for being part of that journey with us. We’re truly excited to  work with you to apply human values to new technology."