Reclaiming Freedom While Democracy Decays and AI Surges

Democratic norms decay as strongmen leaders disable checks on their power; artificial intelligence permeates every sector of societies. Although reflecting different origins and dynamics, these two trends in the first decades of the 21st century both reflect and escalate social distrust and diminish human capacities. Avenues of resistance requiring reclaiming and amplifying human abilities to honor other humans, to protest, and to collaborate (including with technologies).

 

 

 

 

Martha Minow holds the 300th Anniversary University Professorship at Harvard University; she has taught at Harvard Law School since 1981 and served as dean for eight years (2009-2017). An expert in constitutional law and human rights, her work has focused on issues confronting historically marginalized individuals and groups, legal responses to social, political, and religious conflict, and legal treatments of digital communications and technologies.

 

The chair of the board of Massachusetts public media (GBH) and co-chair of the Access to Justice Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Minow also chairs the Board of Trustees of the MacArthur Foundation and serves on the boards of other philanthropies, including the Carnegie Corporation and the SCE Foundation. She also is a board member at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization devoted to strengthening electoral and voting processes in the United States. Her many honors include ten honorary degrees (in law, education, and humane letters) from schools in three countries.