2021 Assembly Projects
THE 2021 ASSEMBLY COHORT brings together team members from five independent, alumni projects developed during the previous four years of the program. These projects address the variety of topics that Assembly has tackled since its inception in 2017, including the ethics and governance of AI, the future of digital security, and disinformation.
Read more below about the five projects in the Assembly 2021 program and watch the cohort's final showcase here.
AI BLINDSPOT aims to dissolve the barriers between those who build AI systems and those who don't — by demystifying the ways in which AI systems might be harmful to vulnerable communities and reducing the burden of understanding the impacts of automated decision making systems.
The team includes Ania Calderon, Hong Qu, Daniel Taber, and Jeff Wen; their Assembly 2021 advisor is Kade Crockford, Director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts.
CLEAN INSIGHTS is a secure, private measurement platform that is focused on answering key questions, instead of enabling invasive surveillance. Clean Insights is a project housed at Guardian Project, a grant-funded mobile software collective that develops privacy-enhanced software and services with a focus on human rights and humanitarian needs.
This team includes Nathan Freitas and is advised by Professor Margo Seltzer, Berkman Klein Center Director and University of British Columbia.
creates tools and practices that encourage the responsible development of artificial intelligence, including through Dataset “Nutrition Labels” that explain what is inside a dataset before it is used to train a machine learning model.
This team includes Kasia Chmielinski, Josh Jospeh, Sarah Newman, Matthew Taylor, Kemi Thomas, and Jess Yurkofsky; their 2021 Assembly Project Fellowship advisor is Mary Gray, Microsoft Research and Indiana University.
DISINFODEX is a database of publicly available information about disinformation campaigns. It currently includes disclosures issued by major online platforms and accompanying reports from independent open source investigators.
This team includes Jenny Fan, Gülsin Harman, Ashley Tolbert, Neal Ungerleider, and Clement Wolf; their 2021 Assembly Project Fellowship advisor is Professor James Mickens, Berkman Klein Center Director.
Cloak & Pixel creates a digital mask that fights pervasive surveillance and helps protect civil liberties, demonstrating that individuals can and should be able to express consent or non-consent beyond the levels of capacity provided by 3rd parties that track individuals’ data.
Cloak & Pixel evolved from the equalAIs project, which was developed by a group of Assembly Fellows in 2018. Cloak & Pixel includes Gretchen Greene, Thom Miano, and Daniel Pedraza; their 2021 Assembly Project Fellowship advisor is Professor Jonathan Zittrain, Berkman Klein Center Director.