The document provides information about the World Ethical Data Forum, which examines ethical issues around data use and technology. It discusses the forum's goals of encouraging dialogue between different stakeholders and exploring topics like privacy, surveillance, and artificial intelligence. The summary highlights some key details: 1) The World Ethical Data Forum addresses ethical concerns around data use and encourages collaboration between technology, business, government, and advocacy groups to discuss the implications of data and AI. 2) The first forum was held in Barcelona in 2018 and covered issues like data analytics, privacy, commercial data use, and government surveillance. It featured prominent speakers like Julian Assange. 3) The next conference will be held in London in July 2020 and

2. INTRODUCTION
The development of new data technologies has
implicated every institution of importance — from
the exchange markets, banking, and business,
through research, education, and the media, to
medicine, policing, jurisprudence, and even the
future of the democratic process itself.
We appear to have reached a tipping point for
civilization. With the potential civil and political
consequences of data’s abuse so severe and
yet the conjectured benefits of its technologies
meaningful enough that it would be wrong not to
try to navigate these risks, seldom has the need for
effective dialogue been as great.
The World Ethical Data Forum is the
only organization in the world that
embraces the full spectrum of inter-
related issues around the use and
future of data. By addressing these
concerns and encouraging the contact
and collaboration of the seemingly
competing worlds of technology, big
business, investment, media, security
and government agencies, tech critics,
human rights lawyers, and privacy and
transparency advocates, the World
Ethical Data Forum is offering a crucial
perspective for the future.

3. The World Ethical Data Forum is the
leading platform for impartial and
balanced exploration of the urgent
ethical and practical questions
around the use and future of data.
From the methods and techniques that generate the granular
data used by scientists, statisticians and developers to the
narratives composed by the media and governments which
frame them, the Forum examines the opportunities and problems
arising from the development of technologies that continue to
open unprecedented possibilities for knowledge and influence.
1. ABOUT THE FORUM

4. Ranging over areas including mass data and data-analytics, their
use and safeguards, privacy and rights, the commercial use of
data by marketing, media and big business, the meaning of limits
or lack of limits to access for security agencies and government,
surveillance, fake news, the recent impressive innovations in
artificial intelligence, and the benefits, pitfalls and future of
blockchain technology, each year the forum gathers the most
brilliant and influential minds from around the world to address
the implications of data and knowledge technologies in all of
their complexity.
Encouraging technological and intellectual innovation and
collaboration between the worlds of research, business, media,
government and investment, and emphasising the quality and
integrity of the human lives they ground, the World Ethical Data
Forum invites participants to enter and define the most crucial
discussion of our time.
This is an incredible
event and its importance
is undeniable... I’ve
never seen such an
interestedandinfluential
community speaking
about issues this way...
Developers, researchers,
investors, entrepreneurs,
academics, politicians…
All sorts of people
committed to creating
opportunities in this
space!
— DR. FENGLIAN XU
former master inventor at IBM and
co-creator of the IBM Hyperledger
blockchain

5. The firstWorld Ethical Data Forum took
place in Barcelona in September 2018
and was covered globally by major
national news outlets including, News.
com.au, the Daily Mail, The Guardian,
Russia Today, Ruptly, MSNBC, Business
Insider, New American, CNN Greece,
The Australian Herald,The Courier Mail,
and Wall Street Italia.
2.4MILLION
VIEWS ON
YOUTUBE
2. WEDF BARCELONA 2018

6. The event also featured in a documentary by La Kaseta,
called“Battle of Social Networks,”which looked at three
different modern-day moments of great social upheaval in
which social media has played a significant role: The Occupy
Movement, The Arab Spring, and The Catalan Referendum.
The Forum showcased headline speakers including National
Inventors Hall of Fame and National Cybersecurity Hall
of Fame inductee Dr. Ralph Merkle; scientist, inventor,
New York Times bestselling author and advisor to Nasa’s
Innovative & Advanced Concepts program Dr. David Brin;
former intelligence officer of the UK’s Security Service
MI5, writer, media commentator and international public
speaker Annie Machon; famed human rights lawyer and
WikiLeaks counsel Jennifer Robinson; and Wikileaks Editor
in Chief Julian Assange, the video of which interview the
Forum broadcast as it was shown, causing a media frenzy
that resulted in 2.4 million views across YouTube in a single
week.
2018 SPEAKERS
Dr. Ralph Merkle
Dr. David Brin
Annie Machon
Jennifer Robinson
Julian Assange

7. 3. NEXT CONFERENCE
1/2/3 JULY

8. As day after day the spectacular benefits and potential
monstrosities of data technologies and their utility are
made more conspicuous, and against the background of
the many urgent issues in politics which are occupying
the world’s media, questions around the exploitation and
control of information have never been more urgent.
In London 2020 the World Ethical Data Forum will not only
continue to explore the cutting edge of data, privacy and AI,
it will also welcome leading lights in the worlds of journalism
and social media to its stage. Celebrated figures from print
journalism will explore the tension between the edited story
of the independent press and the unmediated factual morass
— or‘information anarchy’— of a‘fifth estate’that has never
been more significant politically; while television networks
from across the ideological spectrum will examine the various
serious contradictions in the practice of journalism — between
journalism as a pursuit of truth and journalism as one of the most
powerful instruments available to governments and corporations
for bringing about shifts in the attitudes and feelings of the
public.
The World Ethical
Data Forum is such
an important event
...The outcome of
these conversations
willproveinvaluable.
The first of its kind
…a conference like
this is very much
needed in today’s
society.
— FREDERIK NIELSEN,
COINREVOLUTION

9. LONDON
JULY
2020
CONFIRMED
SPEAKERS
CASSIE KOZYRKOV is Google Cloud’s chief decision scientist. With the stated aim of democratizing decision intelli-
gence and making artificial intelligence safe and reliable, she has advised more than 100 Google teams on statistics and
machine learning. Cassie created the company’s analytics program and has personally trained more than 15,000 staff
members in machine learning, statistics and data-driven decision-making. Prior to joining Google, she was a data science
consultant for government organisations, private companies and academic institutions. Cassie holds a PhD (ABD) in
psychology and neuroscience from Duke University and completed a master’s degree in mathematical statistics at North
Carolina State University.
YANIS VAROUFAKIS is an economist, academic and politician. He was Greece’s finance minister from January 2015
until he resigned in protest against European Union-imposed austerity measures in July that year. Subsequently he
co-founded DiEM25 (Democracy in Europe Movement). Today he leads its electoral arm, European Spring, a transnational
political party that wants to“democratise”the EU, which it says will otherwise fall apart by 2025. In the Greek elections of
2019 he was re-elected to Greek parliament, resuming a central place in Greek and international political process. Among
its aspirations, European Spring wants“A Technological Europe pressing new technologies in the service of solidarity.” He
has suggested that users should be given property rights over the revenue they generate for data-monetising tech com-
panies — and that this revenue should contribute to a universal basic income.
CORY DOCTOROW is a multi-award winning science-fiction novelist, blogger and technology activist. Co-editor of
the popular blog Boing Boing, he contributes to many magazines, websites and newspapers. He is a special consultant
to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and
treaties. Cory holds an honorary doctorate in computer science from the Open University (UK), where he is a visiting
professor; he is also an MIT Media Lab research affiliate and a visiting professor of practice at the University of South
Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science. Born in Toronto, Canada, Cory now lives in Los Angeles. His recent
books include 2019’s Radicalized.
MIKE GRAVEL is an American politician who was a senator for Alaska from 1969 to 1981. In 1971, he effectively
declassified the Pentagon Papers, which showed the US had secretly enlarged the scope of its actions in the Vietnam
War, by reading them into the Senate record. A proponent of direct democracy, he ran for president in 2008 and will
run in 2020. His first campaign drew attention to his National Citizens Initiative for Democracy, a piece of legislation
that would allow US citizens – independent of representative government – to propose and vote on laws and amend-
ments. In 2020 he aims to push the debate in the Democratic primary to the left and promote anti-interventionist
policies.

10. LONDON
JULY
2020
CONFIRMED
SPEAKERS
CHRIS HEDGES is a pulitzer prize winning journalist and author who writes a weekly column for Truthdig. He was for-
eign correspondent at the NewYork Times for 15 years, working in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans.
He helped the paper’s staff win the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for coverage of 9/11. That same year, he re-
ceived the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. Chris has written 12 books, including the New
York Times bestseller Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which he co-authored with cartoonist Joe Sacco.
BRITTANY KAISER Brittany Kaiser worked for Cambridge Analytica for four years, rising to director of business
development before leaving the electoral consultancy in January 2018. In March that year, she handed information
about company activities to the Guardian newspaper’s Cambridge Analytica Files investigation, which had recently
triggered the scandal that would destroy Cambridge Analytica and earn Facebook a $5bn fine. A month later she testi-
fied before the UK parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee as part of its investigation into fake news.
Brittany has subsequently been an expert witness for investigations into the data industry, big tech and elections
around the world. In 2018, she co-founded the Digital Asset Trade Association, which aims to work with policymakers
to enact favourable legislation around blockchain technology and digital currencies. She has also launched a Change.
org petition, #OwnYourData, to reclaim personal data from Facebook.
ANNE-MARIE EKLUND-LÖWINDER is Chief Information Security Officer at The Swedish Internet Foundation and
is ranked as one of Europe’s leading experts on IT security. Anne-Marie is one of the‘seven keyholders of the internet’— a
small group of trustees able to access a last-resort measure to reconstruct the internet in the advent of calamity, there-
by safeguarding its security. She is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences for Information
Technology; board member of the Swedish Transport Administration, Stöldskyddsföreningen; the Irish ccTLD administra-
tor IEDR and the Swedish Law and Informatics Research Institute (IRI); she is also a member of the cyber security council
of the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB), a member of the Swedish government’s Digital Advisory Board, and
of the Swedish Standards Institute SIS/TK 318 (Information Security.) Anne-Marie is a frequently consulted expert in
public and governmental inquiries on matters relating to Internet and security. She has held senior positions in the State
Treasury and the Swedish ICT Commission. In 2013 she was the first Swede to become inducted into the Internet Hall of
Fame.
PETER WRIGHT is on the board of the Law Society, the independent professional body for solicitors in England and
Wales. He is the first chair of the society’s GDPR working group, a past chair of its technology and law committee, and author
of its Cyber SecurityToolkit. Peter is also managing director of Digital Law, a firm that advises on issues including data pro-
tection, privacy, cybersecurity, social media law, e-commerce, website compliance and the Freedom of Information Act.

11. LONDON
JULY
2020
CONFIRMED
SPEAKERS
RALPH MERKLE received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1979, where he co-invented public key cryptography
and invented Merkle Trees, the structural feature at the heart of blockchain and peer-to-peer network technologies, such
as BitTorrent, Git, Bitcoin, and Ethereum. From 1988 until 1999 he worked with Xerox PARC, pursuing research in security
and computational nanotechnology, after which becoming, among other things, a Nanotechnology Theorist at Zyvex
until 2003, when he joined the Georgia Institute of Technology as a Professor of Computing until 2006. He is now Senior
Research Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing, a Director of Alcor, and Chair Emeritus of Nanotechnology
at Singularity University. Among many other honors, he has received the Feynman Prize for Nanotechnology, the ACM’s
Kanellakis Award, the IEEE Kobayashi Award, the RSA Award in Mathematics, and the IEEE Hamming Award; he is a Fellow
of the IACR, a Fellow of the Computer History Museum, and a National Inventor’s Hall of Fame Inductee. Ralph Merkle has
over eighteen patents, has published extensively, and has given hundreds of talks. His home page is www.merkle.com.
CARL MILLER is a technology researcher and award-winning author who has thrown himself into some of the weird-
est, least familiar parts of the digital age. His first book, The Death of the Gods: The New Global Power Grab won the
Transmission Prize 2019. It describes his journey to understand the new centres of power and powerlessness in the digital
age, from politics and media, to business and warfare. It was published in 2018 by Penguin RandomHouse. In 2012 he
co-founded The Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos, the first UK think tank dedicated to studying the digital
world. He’s written for the Economist, Wired, New Scientist, the Sunday Times, the Telegraph and the BBC. He’s also a Visiting
Research Fellow at King’s College London. He sometimes presents programmes for the BBC’s flagship technology show, BBC
Click.
AFSHIN RATTANSI began his journalism career withThe Guardian in the late 1980s as one of the newspaper’s young-
est ever columnists. He went on to work for Britain’s Channel 4, BBC, Al Jazeera Arabic, CNN International and Bloomberg
Television and many other media. In the run-up to the Lehman Brothers crash, he published a collection of novels as“The
Dream of the Decade:The London Novels.”As US pressure increased on Iran, Afshin moved toTehran as news anchor on the
new satelliteTV channel, PressTV which was later banned in Britain. He set up Alternate Reality Productions in London in 2010
making Double Standards, and otherTV news commissions. His writing has appeared in the New Statesman; Counterpunch;
The Oldie; Plays and Players; Mitchell Beazley’s Encyclopaedia of 21st Century;The Journal of the British Astronomical
Association; Association of Lloyd’s Members Journal; Critical Quarterly; Makers of Modern Culture (Routledge, 2007);“Brought
To Book”(Penguin, 1994); Flaunt; Attitude. He is a founder member of the Frontline Club in London and won the Sony Award
for outstanding contribution to international media in 2002.

12. LONDON
JULY
2020
CONFIRMED
SPEAKERS
ANDERS SANDBERG’s research at the Future of Humanity Institute centres on management of low-probability high-
impact risks, estimating the capabilities of future technologies, and very long-range futures. Anders is a Senior Research
Fellow on the ERC UnPrEDICT Programme and the FHI-Amlin Collaboration. He is research associate to the Oxford
Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, and the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics. He is on the advisory boards of a number
of organisations and often debates science and ethics in international media. Anders has a background in computer
science, neuroscience and medical engineering. He obtained his Ph.D. in computational neuroscience from Stockholm
University, Sweden, for work on neural network modelling of human memory.
ANITA GOEL is a pioneer in nanobiophysics, a new science at the intersection of physics, nanotechnology and
biomedicine. She has developed a theoretical framework that elucidates the interplay of matter, energy and information
at a fundamental level of physics. As chairman of Nanobiosym and NBS Diagnostics, she seeks to use her insights to
invent, incubate and commercialize next-generation nanotechnology platforms for mobile and personalized health,
energy harvesting and quantum computing with molecular nanomachines that read and write information in DNA. Anita
has testified before the US Senate in support of the US National Nanotechnology Initiative and advised PresidentObama’s
Strategy for American Innovation.
ANNIE MACHON was an intelligence officer for the UK’s Security Service MI5 and is now a writer, expert media
commentator, and international public speaker. She regularly commentates on security, Foreign Affairs and the
Middle East. She is also a member of the Sam Adams Associates, a global group of intelligence, diplomatic and military
whistleblowers, served four years as the European Director of Law Enforcement Action Partnership, and is an advisory
board member of the Good Technology Collective and the Courage Foundation.
BRAD TEMPLETON is founding faculty member for Computing & Networks at Singularity University, for which he was
chair from 2010-2017, and Chairman Emeritus and futurist of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the world’s leading
cyberspace civil rights foundation. He founded ClariNet Communications Corp, the world’s first“dot-com”company, and
also created rec.humor.funny, and its web site, www.netfunny.com, the world’s longest running blog. He is on the board
of the Foresight Institute, has advised the Google team developing self-driving cars, which he writes about at robocars.
com, and advises Starship on delivery robots and Quanergy in the LIDAR space. He is the founder of two software compa-
nies and is the author of a dozen packaged microcomputer software products in addition to being a well known photog-
rapher, artist, and renowned speaker at international events, on subjects from self-driving cars to online rights.

13. LONDON
JULY
2020
CONFIRMED
SPEAKERS
CHARLES STROSS is a computer scientist and awarding winning author based in Edinburgh, Scotland, whose sci-
ence-fiction has been translated into more than 12 languages. His novel Accelerando won the 2006 Locus Award for
Best Science Fiction Novel;“Missile Gap”won the 2007 Locus Award for best novella.“The Concrete Jungle”won the
Hugo Award for best novella in 2005;“Palimpsest”, included in Wireless, won the same award in 2010, and“Equoid”in
2014 The Apocalypse Codex won the 2013 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel. Stross’s work has been nominated for
a number of other awards, including the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the Hugo
Award for Best Novel, as well as the Japanese Seiun Award. He co-wrote 2012’s The Rapture of the Nerds with Cory
Doctorow.
CRAIG MURRAY is an internationally celebrated author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British
Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004, during which time he exposed the human rights vio-
lations of the Karimov administration. He campaigns for human rights and for transparency in global politics. Elected
Rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010, his many books include Sikunder Burnes: Master of the Great
Game (2016), The Catholic Orangemen of Togo (2009), and a memoir Murder in Samarkand (2006).
PHILIPPE VAN NEDERVELDE is an entrepreneur specializing in the translation of visions, concepts and dreams
from science fiction and future-oriented imaginative engineering into daily-life. He is CEO of E-Spaces, a virtual and aug-
mented reality company, Director of International Development at The 2045 Initiative, a nonprofit organization creating
a networked community of the world’s leading scientists in the field of healthspan extension by means of the cybernetic
technologies, and former Executive Director of the Foresight Institute. He is a board member at the Lifeboat Foundation.
TIMOTHY QUINN Timothy Quinn is co-founder and the technology lead of Hatebase, a data-driven software platform
for detecting and monitoring hate speech, and also serves as CTO of Toronto-based OMX, Director of Technology with
The Sentinel Project, and an eGovernance expert with the Canadian Executive Service Organization. Hatebase’s natural
language engine, Hatebrain, derives the probability of hateful context from the linguistic analysis it performs on public
conversations in many languages across more than 200 countries. Its data, made available through the Hatebase web
interface and API, is used by a variety of organisations, from social media companies and NGOs to the Los Angeles Police
Department. For government agencies and non-profts, it helps monitor xenophobic movements at home and abroad
and is an instrument for the early identification of regional violence and atrocities. Media and tech firms have employed
Hatebase to detect and quarantine discriminatory content. Academic institutions can use it to analyse the use and
dissemination of hate speech. Timothy has been building software companies for 25 years, and has taught at New York
University and the City University of New York.

14. LONDON
JULY
2020
CONFIRMED
SPEAKERS
TODD E. PIERCE is a major in the U.S. Army and was assigned to the Office of the Chief Defense Counsel in 2008.
An American lawyer, military historian, former army computer technician, and former Judge Advocate General Defense
Attorney, he volunteered to represent defendants at Guantanamo, describing the legal theory underpinning the
detention camp as an assault upon the structure of constitutional government. In an extraordinarily rich career he has
been, among other things, a member of the National Association of Scholars, calling for a more balanced approach on
global education. He is an officer in the United States Army Reserve.
FENGLIAN XU is the former master inventor at IBM and one of the co-creators of the IBM Hyperledger blockchain.
Fenglian personally holds 30 technology patents mainly in semantic text search, data and service management, security
and blockchain technology fields. Dr. Fenglian Xu was in the top 50 Techwomen of 2017. She is currently chief scientist at
Aladdin Blockchain, working to create a platform for medical data to be shared between hospitals to aid the diagnosis of
latent chronic health conditions. The aim of this research is to save hospitals large sums of money through early diagno-
sis and prevention, and ultimately to reduce the need for the costly ongoing treatment of chronic disease, and in some
cases to have it entirely unnecessary.
PHIL BOOTH is co-ordinator of MedConfidential, an independent, non-partisan organisation that campaigns for
confidentiality and consent in health and social care. It aims to ensure that the flow of data into, across and out of the
UK’s NHS and care system is consensual, safe and transparent. Phil is on the advisory board of Privacy International,
which seeks to protect personal privacy against government and corporate intrusions, and on the advisory council of the
Foundation for Information Policy Research, which studies the interactions between information technology and society.
Previously, he was involved in the successful No2ID campaign against a national identity register in the UK.
MIHAELA ULIERU is founder and president of the Impact Institute for the Digital Economy, which supports and
consults on the adoption of new technologies. She has served on Canada’s Science, Technology and Innovation Council,
Singapore’s Science and Engineering Research Council and Romania’s Executive Authority for Scientific Research and
Innovation. As a professor at the University of New Brunswick, she founded the Adaptive Risk Management Laboratory.
Today, Mihaela is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Data Driven Development, having
pushed for blockchain to be included in its 2016 list of the top 10 emerging technologies.

15. 08:00 – 09:00 Registration
09:00 – 10:00 Welcome Coffee
10:00 – 10:10 Opening Speech
10:10 – 10:40 Talk 1
10:40 – 11:10 Talk 2
11:10 – 11:40 Talk 3
11:40 – 12:10 Coffee Break
12:40 – 13:10 Talk 4
13:10 – 13:40 Talk 5
13:40 – 14:40 A Panel Spot 1.1
14:40 – 15:40 Lunch Break
15:40 – 16:10 Talk 6
16:10 – 16:40 Talk 7
16:40 – 17:30 A Panel Spot 1.2
17:30 – 17:40 WEDF Wrap-up
17:40 – 20:00 Post discussion, drinks & networking event
19:00 – 20:30 VIP with Speakers informal pre-event
drinksLONDON
JULY
2020
THREE-DAY AGENDA
(MAIN STAGE)
DAY
1
WEDNESDAY
1
TUESDAY
30

16. 07:00 – 09:00 Registration
08:00 – 09:00 Breakfast Roundtables
09:00 – 09:10 WEDF Opening Speech
09:10 – 09:40 Talk 8
09:40 – 10:10 Talk 9
10:10 – 10:40 Talk 10
10:40 – 11:10 Coffee Break
11:10 – 11:40 Talk 11
11:40 – 12:10 Talk 12
12:10 – 12:40 Talk 13
12:40 – 13:10 Talk 14
13:10 – 14:10 Lunch Break
14:10 – 14:40 Talk 15
14:40 – 15:10 Talk 16
15:10 – 15:40 Talk 17
15:40 – 16:10 Talk 18
16:10 – 17:10 A Panel Spot 2.1
17:10 – 17:20 WEDF wrap-up
17:20 – 21:00 Wine & Cocktails Reception
LONDON
JULY
2020
THREE-DAY AGENDA
(MAIN STAGE)
THURSDAY
2
DAY
2

17. 07:00 – 09:00 Registration
08:00 – 09:00 Breakfast Roundtables
09:00 – 09:10 WEDF Opening Speech
09:10 – 09:40 Talk 19
09:40 – 10:10 Talk 20
10:10 – 10:40 Talk 21
10:40 – 11:10 Talk 22
11:10 – 11:40 Coffee Break
11:40 – 12:10 Talk 23
12:10 – 12:40 A Panel Spot 3.1
12:40 – 13:10 Coffee Break
13:10 – 13:40 Talk 24
13:40 – 14:10 Talk 25
14:10 – 14:40 A Panel Spot 3.2
14:40 – 14:50 WEDF wrap-up
14:30 – 16:30 Various workshops
19:00 – 01:00 Ending Party
LONDON
JULY
2020
THREE-DAY AGENDA
(MAIN STAGE)
FRIDAY
3
DAY
3

18. We use computers to simulate the weather, analyse
DNA sequences, population growth, the financial
markets; to model the beginning, expansion, and end
of the universe, chaotic systems; we use them to test
for and diagnose illness without bias, saving millions
of lives; to model human cognition and behaviour,
quantum states, the interactions of individuals
with systems online and with one another, and to
predict the results of elections... all of this the kind of
impartial, analytic, non-interventionist observation
ofsystemsanddatasets,designedtounderstandhow
theyevolveaccordingtotheirownprinciples,thathas
proven invaluable to science and predictive analytics.
4. DATA

19. However, in addition to such structuring and analysis of data in
search of new insights also exists an ever more lucrative market
that recruits AI and the potential of data in order to help shape
and determine these very behaviours.
Cambridge Analytica is a recent and notorious case in point.
Cambridge Analytica’s psychographics meant that they were able
to identify individuals most susceptible to political persuasion,
capable of being drawn over into another way of voting and
thinking or otherwise confirmed in their beliefs, and then use this
analysis to feed content intended to shape attitudes, opinions
and ultimately voting behaviour according to the interests of
their clients.
Manipulation of data has long been exploited for the achievement
of political and financial ends — gerrymandering and
malapportionment of the electorate are supreme examples of
this — but never before has a gerrymandering of an individual’s
personal values and beliefs been so easily accomplishable. With
already well over half of the entire world’s population able regularly
to access the internet, and subject to such persuasive technologies,
The World Ethical Data
Forum is the world’s new
focal point for business,
social networks,
fintech, cutting-edge
IT, government, R&D,
and media. It is where
the discussions of
consequence happen.
From this clash of ideas
willbebornthepowerful
technologies, laws and
interpersonal networks
of the future.
—PHILIPPEVANNEDERVELDE,
FORMEREXECUTIVEDIRECTOR
OF THE FORESIGHT INSTITUTE

20. and with more and more of our life already coming down
to the ways the AI which govern these systems involve us in
their processes to encourage and manipulate engagement,
there is perhaps no other area in today’s world with so
much at stake.
Taking seriously the current state of affairs around
data harvesting and use, the technologies which are
developing and how great a leverage and influence over
the future and the present the control of these domains
is, the Forum invites exploration of these and other
important issues, however difficult they may threaten to
become.
The scope of‘data’?
The scope and nature of the issues around data are not
immediately obvious. It is not only a technical problem
— of how data is generated, optimised and put to work
— but, importantly, also a question of how data comes
to have meaning at all. Whether the term ‘data’ is used
in a general way to describe a gathered body of facts or
more technically to designate the materials of statistics
and data analytics, a datum remains only a unit of
potential information until it is placed in an interpretative
framework or theory — a context that grounds it, giving
it significance. The consequences of this are far-reaching.
These frameworks are not restricted to theories of science,
mathematics, or statistics, but rightly understood can be
seen to form hierarchies of shifting, interdependent and
often competing narratives and priorities that run the
whole gamut, from the dialectical, in pursuit of truth, to
the realpolitikal, taking in even the narratives propounded
by media and governments, which at their worst dispense
with or downgrade the truthfulness of the claims made,
instead seeking advantage from them.
Though extremely valuable in their own right, to
embrace the technical considerations of data exclusively
would therefore miss a significant point. Because of this
dependency on their frameworks, for all a fact and the
interpretive scheme that grounds it are conceptually

21. distinguishable they are also conceptually and practically
indissociable.
For this reason, the‘problem of data’ implicates
the entire knowledge economy, embracing‘fake news,’
media narratives and the impact of social media quite as
naturally as considerations of bias in data analytics and
AI. The World Ethical Data Forum has therefore opened
its stage to theorists, journalists and politicians as well
as those directly involved in the creation and use of data
technologies, so that the question can be consciously and
responsibly addressed in all its richness.
How does the Forum contribute?
Questions such as these are seldom straightforward. Even
less so in an area the scope and implications of which are
unclear, it being so new, and for which our intuitions are
potentially ill-suited.
Is there a right answer?
The correct and perhaps only truly rational answer is to
establish an ongoing discussion that strives to identify and
minimize the chances we make the kinds of potentially
catastrophic errors definitive answers can incline us to and
to maximize the chances of delivering the positive goods
these technologies so amply promise.
At the back of the forum is a modesty. Issues as unclear,
significant and urgent as those around knowledge
technologies are no place for demagoguery but of
balanced and collaborative democratic effort by people of
all perspectives.
The integrity of the process is key to achieving this
aim and guided and informed by theorists, academics,
journalists, politicians and the creators and users of data
technologies themselves, we believe the forum to be the
most reasonable and promising approach to a problem
that may otherwise appear intractable.

22. worldethicaldata.org