Talk by Radhika Radhakrishnan, Programme Officer, Centre for Internet and Society

 Sep 13, 2019

 2:38 PM

 IIIT Bangalore

The Center for Information Technology and Public Policy (CITAPP) at IIITB is organising a talk titled "AI in Healthcare" by Radhika Radhakrishnan, Programme Officer, Centre for Internet and Society, New Delhi at 2:00 pm on 13th September, 2019 (Friday).

Venue: Room 310, IIITB campus, 26/C, Electronics City, Hosur Road, Bengaluru

About the talk:
In the talk, Radhika Radhakrishnan will critically question the dominant narrative of 'AI for social good' that has been widely adopted by various stakeholders in India (including the private sector, non-profits, and the Indian State) from a feminist standpoint. Specific to healthcare in India, such a narrative has been employed towards solving development challenges (such as a shortage of medical practitioners in remote regions of the country) through the introduction of AI applications targeted towards the sick-poor. Through her research and fieldwork, Radhika analyses the layers of expropriation and experimentation that come into play when AI technologies become a method of using 'diverse' bodies and medical records of the sick-poor as ‘data’ to train proprietary AI algorithms at a low cost in the absence of effective State regulatory mechanisms. She argues that structural challenges (such as lack of incentives for medical practitioners to join public healthcare) get reframed into opportunities to substitute labour (people) by capital (technology) through the innovation of 'spectacular technologies' such as AI. Throughout the talk, Radhika will also highlight the methodologies she used to conduct this research.

Speaker Bio:
Radhika Radhakrishnan works as a Programme Officer at the Centre for Internet and Society, New Delhi, India, where she does research on feminist approaches to regulating Artificial Intelligence. She previously worked with the United Nations Internet Governance Forum as a Consultant on Gender and Access. She has a Master’s in Women’s Studies from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and a Bachelor’s in Computer Science Engineering from M.S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bangalore. Outside of her job, Radhika spends her free time protesting on the streets as a women’s rights activist and moonlighting on Twitter as a raging feminist with no chill.