How can faith-based actors, civil society, and secular AI ethics organizations work together for a digitally just future in an age marked by the rush towards ever more powerful digital technology and artificial intelligence across all sectors of life?

The upcoming international symposium “Our Common Future: Advocating for Digital Rights and AI Accountability” is set to explore the question.

The event on 13–14 April in Berlin, Germany, is bringing together 25 invited participants from key ecumenical and broader civil society partners with the aim of establishing a framework for coordinated and collaborative action towards digital justice.

WACC is organising the symposium in collaboration with the World Council of Churches (WCC), the Association of Protestant Churches and Missions in Germany (EMW), and Brot für die Welt.

Responding to the need for moral leadership

The symposium builds in part on groundwork laid at a first, groundbreaking international symposium held in the same city in September 2021 under the heading “Communication for Social Justice in a Digital Age”.

Today, almost five years later, the advances of digital technologies and their impact across all areas of life have continued to progress.

In particular, the recent global breakthrough and mainstreaming of generative artificial intelligence makes all the more pertinent questions of ethics, of justice, of accountability, of the role of faith communities, and of bridge-building between sectors.

At the heart of the upcoming symposium is the aim of catalyzing ecumenical involvement and collaboration with civil society networks – across national and international advocacy – towards digital justice and AI accountability, explains WACC Deputy General Secretary Sara Speicher.

“Our symposium is seeking to establish bridges between different groupings to advance a shared ethical understanding of the pros and cons of digital technologies, including AI,” she says.

“Moral leadership is required to stop the currently largely unregulated rush towards more and more powerful digital technology, particularly as we see that it consistently fails to benefit all members of society and is taking place largely without robust mechanisms for transparency and accountability.”

Grassroots experience of WACC partners

Representatives from WACC partners Networks for Diversity, Equity, and Sustainability (REDES A.C.) in Mexico, Common Room Networks Foundation in Indonesia, and Helping Hand in Georgia are slated to bring in their practical experiences to advance digital justice at the grassroots level.

“Voices and participation from the diversity of communities that comprise the Global South are vitally important both to establishing dialogue and also to advocating meaningful directions and actions,” says WACC General Secretary Philip Lee.

Towards a common future

Bishop Prof. Dr Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, moderator of the World Council of Churches central committee, reflects: “As ecumenical partners, as faith communities and as civil society actors, we must build on current initiatives as well as identify new ways to strengthen our impact, to ensure a common future in which digital technology supports democratic principles and justice, peace, and care for creation.”

Photo: Paul Jeffrey/WCC