Hanif asks MP Asato about gender justice in AI systems

Thank you, and thank you to the Member of Parliament.

Your experience really shows how generative AI can be weaponized against women, queer people, trans people, and particularly those of us in public life.

And I'm super, super grateful that you're using your platform as a legislator centering gender justice and tech surveillance.

I think all day it's in this panel that we're really able to tease into that particular issue, which is devastating.

There are so many survivors of AI-generated sexual abuse who have no recourse.

And I know we touched on several components of this issue in terms of legislation and policy.

Could you speak more broadly about gender justice as it comes to AI systems?

I mean, certainly we're going to be regulating these systems, but the responsibility that

our communities have in addition to, of course, as legislators passing stronger regulations.

Thank you for your question.

I think that one of the issues here is that the whole of the online space has been developed without the sort of social norms that we would actually expect of each other in our offline world.

And therefore, when it comes to gender justice, as you talk about it, that is ignored because actually the Internet and these platforms were created by men.

In the main, they were not shaped by women, they were not shaped with children in mind.

And therefore we're having to try to reverse decades now of a wild west of development.

But that doesn't mean that it's impossible to do.

And I think we're seeing that actually our communities are actually fighting back.

And one of the things that has been really sort of fantastic in terms of my own case is the number of people coming forward saying, I'm so glad that somebody somewhere is trying to stand up for those of us who think that this is wrong.

And we don't want to live in this space where so many...

many people are being discriminated against.

Having said that, of course, there are very, very strong, you know, sort of positions taken out there around freedom of speech.

And what I would say is, is that when

women and other minorities decide not to be in a space, they lose their freedom of speech.

And I think it's something that we simply aren't recognizing enough, because freedom of speech should not be about the loudest voices, the ones who have the most money or the most power.

Freedom of speech should be about all of us equally being able to be in these spaces on an equal basis.

So that's what I hope we're all fighting for today.

Thank you so much.

Councilmember Maloney.