"Joint civil society statement: interventions to mitigate the racially discriminatory impacts of emerging tech including AI," 15 July 2020

The undersigned organizations welcome the publication of the report “Racial discrimination and emerging digital technologies: a human rights analysis,” by Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, E. Tendayi Achiume, and wish to underscore the importance and timeliness of a number of the recommendations made therein:
1. Technologies that have had or will have significant racially discriminatory impacts should be banned outright…
2. Gender mainstreaming and representation along racial, national and other intersecting identities requires radical improvement at all levels of the tech sector…
3. Technologists cannot solve political, social, and economic problems without the input of domain experts and those personally impacted…
4. Access to technology is as urgent an issue of racial discrimination as inequity in the design of technologies themselves…
5. Representative and disaggregated data is a necessary, if not sufficient, condition for racial equity in emerging digital technologies, but it must be collected and managed equitably as well…
6. States as well as corporations must provide remedies for racial discrimination, including reparations…