Good morning, and welcome to the 2023 PIT-UN Convening. We made it, we’re finally in the same room together! We have been building this network over Zoom for many years. We ventured out last year at the City University of New York. And we’re excited that Boston decided to host this year’s convening and bring us such good weather and such wonderful views. So thank you all.

I know, because I’ve spoken to some of you, that many of you have heavy hearts because you are thinking of conflicts that are happening outside of this room. So I want to also encourage you to take time to check in on each other and have the deep conversations that need to happen in a community and to take care of yourselves and each other.

I also want to begin by saying that we have been very thoughtful in putting together the panels that you have seen. And part of that is a recognition that I’ve often heard people say, “What is this thing, PIT-UN? What is this thing?” And then the first thing we jump to are the pain points, this is going to be a challenge to do. So today or the next two days are opportunities for you to reflect on the work of our grantees. They’re all in your panels. And they have been an important part of the work that we have been doing together for the past five years in building this field. They are just a representation of a small sample of some of the things that have inspired us to continue to grow and shape this field. So I hope that you take it as inspiration and not a complete picture. Because, of course, it’s a curated experience, right?

The other thing I want you all to leave with, if you leave with anything at all, is that equitable innovation is powered by and for people. When I say “the public interest,” I am curious about which public and how we continue to refine and define that really clearly.

Our goal for the convening, however, is to continue to build the connective tissues of our diverse and ambitious community. I hope that you will take the time to connect with old and new friends, share some of your big ideas and yes, your small ones, too, and find potential collaborators and then celebrate and reaffirm our shared commitment to this work.

The 2023 convening marks a significant milestone in our work at PIT-UN. When I came to New America in 2018, public interest technology was a nascent idea. At the time, our goal was to explore and ground technological development and deployment with an eye toward people and their needs. More and more people were asking questions like, “Where’s all this technology taking us?” “Why does it seem like technology is working against the things we value and care about?” “How can we do things differently?” And importantly, a few people whispered, “Are we even comfortable marrying technology with questions of values?”

An emerging group of technologists, philanthropists, policymakers, researchers, and activists — many in this room — came together to develop a shared vision of a field that would draw on the insights of many disciplines, among them computer science, engineering, public policy, the social sciences, the humanities, and law. Our goal was to make the public interest a core concern of technology, design, development, and governance, not just an afterthought.

We started by organizing a group of universities to define what the space could be. We wanted to imagine what the coursework would look like, to imagine the experiences that students should have, and to identify core competencies for public interest technologists. We started with 21 universities, and we are now at 63 universities.

Over the next two days, you will discover that each university is pursuing public interest technology in unique ways. We have some that are focused on data science, clearly, and they are leveraging data in ways that are more equitable and representative of our diverse communities. We have others that are building cybersecurity clinics that give students experiential learning opportunities with local communities and nonprofits. And I just want to give a shoutout to Stillman, because you’ve just received the funding to continue your work, one of our first HBCUs to do so. So I’m really excited about that. And then others are building technical tools to increase access to court proceedings for marginalized defendants. Those are just two examples of some of the work that’s happening in our network right now.

Over the past five years, we have invested over $15 million in 145 public interest technology projects through our annual Network Challenge. This fall, nine of our member universities are hosting PIT-specific career fairs. And our member-led working groups, which some of you saw happening this morning, have forged connections among universities and have submitted recommendations grounded in the public interest technology framework to the National Science Foundation.

Looking ahead, we’re excited to explore a regional model and how you can work together locally to advance public interest technology. We’re also going to be debuting in 2024 an OER with lots of resources from some of the grantees you are going to meet today and some of the ones you are going to continue to learn about as things go on.

What connects all of these efforts is a commitment to staying with the difficult questions that technology raises: Who stands to benefit from a given technology? And who might that technology harm? How can we better shape technology? And how should our technologies be governed? Those are the grounding questions that come up within our community all the time.

I think it’s often assumed in technology circles (and, I might add, in other circles, too) that innovation means sacrificing someone or some community for the greater good. Public interest technology demands that we interrogate those assumptions and ask again and again: How are we defining innovation? And what is the greater good in the first place? Can we clearly articulate in whose interests we are designing and shaping our technology tools? Public interest demands that we resist an easy tech solution frame. The idea that tech on its own will solve society’s problems continues in many circles. And as an alternative, PIT offers us ways to introduce many different perspectives on the problems we’re trying to solve, whatever the issue may be: access to housing, clean water, education, voting rights, health care.

PIT asks us to approach these complex problems with some humility and some recognition that we cannot solve these problems alone. Each of us needs the other to try to solve these entrenched problems.

Recent global events, from the turmoil in Ukraine, to Israel, to January 6, underscore the double-edged sword that is technology married with violence. On one hand, social media grants individuals the unparalleled ability to share their personal truths, build community, rally support, and offer invaluable documentary evidence. It can serve as a beacon for truth and openness, and it can even facilitate healthy debate. On the other hand, we’re increasingly witnessing its darker side of social media, where apps are weaponized to marginalize, spread falsehoods, deepen societal chasms, and incite acts of violence.

These issues intersect with ethics, trust, philosophy, civic engagement, human rights, and institutional stability. These are the various pillars that public interest technology seeks to buttress. The burgeoning interest among students at PIT-UN–affiliated universities to delve into these critical issues is really a call to action for us. We must pave clear pathways for these conversations and ensure that every participant feels an integral part of our broader field, which is dedicated to fortifying democracy, bolstering institutions, enhancing accessibility, and championing justice.

In essence, our collective endeavor should be centered around strengthening the communities that we serve. That’s our aim and our goal.

Thanks to the leadership of BU and Howard University, we have a small but mighty student track this week with papers, posters, and conversation circles on PIT. I invite you to visit and join the activities on the second floor today. This is reiterating what was said, but I am really encouraged and excited by the student work that’s from 2:30 to 5 p.m. on the second floor, as your schedule will allow you.

One thing to note is that BU and Howard hosted a wildly successful hackathon last year, and it is coming back again in this very space in February 2024. So, looking forward to inviting your students from across the network.

Finally, I want to give a nod to some of the keynotes that are coming up today and why they are so inspiring to us. Deirdre Mulligan was one of the founding members of PIT-UN and co-authored the founding definition of public interest technology. She’s now serving in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and embodies the kind of collaboration we need between academia and government. So, thank you, Deirdre.

Rumman Chowdhury, who has served on our evaluation committee a few times, is a pioneer in the field of applied algorithmic ethics, creating cutting-edge sociotechnical solutions for ethical, explainable, and transparent AI.

And finally, last but not least, and a great segue into our morning keynote, is Jasmine McNealy, who you’ll hear from. She is a lawyer, a critical public interest technologist, and a social scientist who works to influence law and policy surrounding technological ecosystems, privacy, surveillance, and data governance.

We know that our work does not take place in an ivory tower. We are very much connected to real-world problems. We’re living through challenging times in which many public institutions and public goods are under attack and being eroded. Higher education is one of them. This is one of the reasons it was so important for us to start the morning with Jasmine. We invited Jasmine to open our convening and set the tone for two days of conversation because she offers a powerful interdisciplinary framework for understanding how technology shapes society and the role that universities can play in advancing public interest technology and democracy itself.

Jasmine is a senior fellow in tech policy with the Mozilla Foundation, an associate professor at the University of Florida, and a faculty associate at Berkeley and the Center for Internet and Society. In 2022, she served as a technology advisor to the federal government. Jasmine personifies the kind of rigorous, interdisciplinary, and accessible public scholarship that demonstrates the best of what higher education has to offer our students, our communities, and our institutions.

It’s with great pleasure that I ask you to welcome our opening keynote, Jasmine McNealy.