PIT-UN Overview

PIT-UN is dedicated to growing a new interdisciplinary field around public interest technology and aims to place people, especially those most vulnerable or marginalized, at the center of technology development. The partnership is an opportunity for GW to combine its historical strengths in fields like law, policy and international affairs with technology innovation to grow a new generation of civic-minded technologists and digitally fluent policy leaders. We believe the GW OSPO aligns nicely with these goals and open source practices can enable students, faculty, and staff to build and share public interest technologies to positively impact society.

The GW OSPO Director has taken over as the PIT-UN designee from Susan Aaronson who guided many successful initiatives over the past four years. GW became a founding member of PIT-UN under Susan’s leadership and this year she announced the new PIT scholars program and she is in the inaugural PIT Scholar cohort. We thank her for all of her work and passionate support of the program as the PIT-UN GW designee and we look forward to working with her via her PIT Scholar cohort efforts.

PIT-UN Calls-to-Action

We invite the GW community to join us if you are interested in leveraging technology to promote, protect, and preserve the public interest. Students, faculty, and staff, please don’t hesitate to reach out to the GW OSPO with any questions or inquiries. Here are some opportunities to act.

• PIT-UN is looking for volunteers to join the National Deep Inference Fabric (NDIF) Public Interest University Network Advisory Group. 

  • NDIF aims to democratize AI by providing transparent access to massive AI models, enabling detailed human understanding without requiring researchers to own the models. Advisory Group members will work with NDIF to develop ethical, responsible, and inclusive AI practices. The goal is to facilitate a process by which non-ML researchers from diverse fields such as policy, law, sociology, psychology, etc., can discuss the intersection of their work with LLMs and explore NDIF's "white box" tools.

    Advisory Group members will attend quarterly remote sessions, as well as an in-person session at the Public Interest Technology Summit at San José State University in November, 2024 to ensure that the new NDIF research capabilities advance interdisciplinary research in the public interest.  If you are interested, please email David Lippert to get invited to an informational zoom meeting on June 7th.

• Connect with our new Policy Fellow Jasmine McNealy if you have ideas or questions about how to advance PIT policy work: [email protected]

• Data and Democracy Workshops from San José State University: we’ve had a great response from PIT-UN members, but we need your help reaching local and state elections officials and policy professionals. Please post or forward this link to any email newsletters, Listservs, LinkedIn groups or other networks that reach people working in the elections space: https://pitcases.org/events/data-democracy-workshops-savi-2024/

• The Tech for Humanity Summit on Thursday, June 6 will feature dynamic discussions on the role of data in securing human rights and dignity. The Tech for Humanity Prize will be awarded to Iniowula Deborah Raji for her research, writing and advocacy around racial and gender bias in data systems, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Register for the livestream here.

• The deadline to submit papers to The Journal of Integrated Global STEM for its special issue on public interest technology is extended to June 15.  Learn more and submit here.

• Connect with our growing PIT Student Network: Nia is eager to connect your institution's PIT students. Please forward this survey to your student affairs team or connect them with Nia directly at [email protected].