Dr. Wendy Wong

This talk will discuss some of the key themes from "We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age", which is a new book published by MIT Press. Human rights are one of the major political innovations of the 20th century. Their emergence after World War II and global uptake promised a new world in which human autonomy, community, dignity, and equality could be protected. Datafication, however, poses some unique challenges for our human rights framework because they are “sticky” and ubiquitous in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).
The talk focuses on five takeaways from the book that ties AI and data to human rights.

Dr. Wendy H. Wong is Professor of Political Science and Principal’s Research Chair at the University of British Columbia (UBC). She was recently named “2024 Researcher of the Year” at UBC, Okanagan campus. She is an award-winning international relations scholar with expertise in global governance, human rights, civil society, and AI/Big Data. Her most recent book, We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age (MIT Press 2023), was named to Journal of Democracy’s “Favorite Books” of 2023 and was a finalist for the 2024 Lionel Gelber prize. Wong is the author of two other award-winning books on global civil society, dozens of academic articles and chapters, and contributes to outlets such as CBC, The Globe and Mail, and the Conversation. Previously, she was at the University of Toronto, where she was Professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Governance and Civil Society.

This event is organized by the SCGG.