Soundbite: AI and Human Rights Investigations

Technology has changed journalism, business, governance, and human rights work. How are human rights investigators grappling with the challenges presented by AI, social media, deepfakes, and data at a global scale? On 21 December 2016, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 71/248, establishing the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism to assist in the investigation and prosecution of persons responsible for the most serious crimes under International Law committed in the Syrian Arab Republic since March 2011. It is more commonly referred to as "the Mechanism", or "IIIM". Having collected millions of documents and over 20TB of data, this talk will discuss the people, processes, and technology behind the UN's special mechanism, and new trends in human rights accountability. 

Mr Keith Hiatt

Mr Keith Hiatt leads the Information and Evidence Section at the United Nation's International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism for Syria. He is also a Research Fellow at Stanford University's Handa Center for Human Rights and International Justice. Before joining the United Nations, Mr Hiatt was a Vice President at Benetech and a Program Director at the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley. After law school, Mr Hiatt clerked for Judge Ronald Gould fo the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In 2014, as a community lawyer in East Palo Alto, he won the California Bar Association President's Award for Pro Bono Service. Prior to attending law school, Mr Hiatt worked as a software engineer at Microsoft and an applied technology specialist at Boeing.