Washington, DC, February 25 2023  -- The presentations by a lineup of experts in the salient facets of Privacy opened this year’s Dialogue on Diversity colloquium series, presented February 24th , in Washington at the UNIDOS-US 16th Street mini-auditorium. “The many-sided agenda, remarked Dialogue President Ma. Cristina Caballero, focuses on significant Privacy concerns, reviewed assaults that 21st century culture and its internet progeny daily inflict on the sensitive faculties and the often jaded attitudes of the country’s population.” The initial agenda segment was highlighted by remarks of Sen. Mark Warner from his Capitol Hill office, discussing the potentially menacing activities of Tik Tok, suddenly a household word, with business ties — and, by reason of its penetrating collection of personal data on millions of young persons, forming both a potential national security import and a socially menacing corpus of intelligence on the U.S. and world youth populations, which lie in the ambit of its almost hypnotic influence.  An interview hosted by Pedro Biaggi, Washington Latino radio host, with Eduardo Perdomo, MOLA Director, was replayed with extensive commentary by Mr. Biaggi

In the five hour series of mini-lectures, highlighted by the erudite and tireless Brookings researcher Nicol Turner Lee,  Dr. Turner Lee carefully spotlighted the practices, the laws, and the chronic inattention of the country’s population that have shorted such significant needs as effective broadband and computer availability for geographically or economically isolated households. 

The progress of Artificial Intelligence (now A.I.), the next phase in the swift but steady growth of computer capacity in the often urgent tasks of formulating the modes of operation in a massive economy and a growingly complex society, was laid out by the skilled technical operative Brenda Leong. After an extensive career with Future of Privacy Forum, Ms. Leong is now part of the trio of A.I. experts powering BNH.AI., the boutique firm hastening the construction of A.I capability in academic and business organizations. Her account was followed by a review, designed by Stephanie Wong of the Future of Privacy Forum, mapping the now newly filled out landscape of computer efficiency, powered largely by A.I., whose capabilities, monitored by experts to curb possible biases in social and governmental applications, are opening promising vistas of systems management.

Silvia Martínez, Professor Emeritus in linguistics at Howard University, held forth on the contribution an efficient society will set in play to encourage rapid development of a comprehensive system of internet access, through a thoroughgoing mapping of the social and economic roadmap of U.S. society and the strides to this end by investigators and academic experts to lay out the dimensions of these problems — and, of key importance, with the bounds of security for the labors of particular investigators through copyright and similar systems . 

A topically fascinating exposition followed at midday, as Franklin Urteaga, former White House technical advisor, held forth on the recently unveiled performance of a computer system designed to spot and identify “fake news” — an elusive species that has appeared in recent years as the root of erratic and perverse swings of public sentiment in any of unnumbered directions. The newly introduced system depends at bottom on the instant reading of the judgments of some 10,000 news producers and experts basically rated as smart and reliable, whose strongly supported verdict, read promptly, judges the questioned claim. Sample experience to date has confirmed the validity of the resulting determinations, or “answers”. The utility of the device and its capabilities in a topsy turvy political environment is readily enough perceived.

The concluding Colloquium segment brought together the estimable Adrian Gropper, the Dialogue’s perennial expert on health care information (and its sanctity) and the utility of computer science to analyze and protect it, leading a free discussion whose participants were Prof. Ingrid Sturgis, heading the newly set up Department of Media, Journalism, and Film at Howard, joined by, among others, the remarkable head of Capital Construction Enterprises, Ms. Patricia Corrales, who also produces the annual city-wide Washington Fiesta fair, a celebration of, among other things, both the vigor and the style of the city’s Latino population..                                                  

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