David Evan Harris

@davidevanharris.com

1363 Followers 342 Following

Chancellor's Public Scholar @UCBerkeleyofficial.bsky.social Advisor/Fellow: @BrennanCenter.bsky.social, CA Initiative for Tech & Democracy, Int’l Computer Science Inst., Ctr. for Int’l Governance Innovation https://haas.berkeley.edu/faculty/harris-david/

1931 OFFICE O F THE GOVERNOR OCT 1 3 2025 To the Members o f the California State Assembly: 1 am signing Assembly Bill 853, which strengthens the California Al Transparency Act t o ensure that Californians can begin t o reliably assess whether digital content is generated o r modified using artificial intelligence (Al). The proliferation o f Al-generated content is having a profound effect o n all o f us, particularly as the rapidly evolving technology becomes increasingly easy t o access and distribute, and the content itself becomes more and more difficult to distinguish from reality. This bill is a critical step in allowing us t o clearly distinguish the real from the synthetic, and thereby enhance trust in the use o f A l i n our everyday lives. As with the regulation of any nascent technology, some stakeholders remain concerned that provisions of the bill, while well-intentioned, present implementation challenges that could lead t o unintended consequences, including impairment of user privacy. I encourage the Legislature to enact follow-up legislation in 2026, before the law takes effect, t o address these technical feasibility issues without jeopardizing its intent t o enhance the safety and security Ø f all Californians. avin Newso GOVERNOR GAVIN NEWSOM • SACRAMENTO, C A 95814 • (916) 445-2841
TRANSFORMER Here's the full draft statement, dated 30/01/2025. Al Action Summit Co-chaired by France and India 10-11 February, 2025, Paris Statement on Inclusive and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence for People and the Planet 1. Participants from XX countries, including government leaders, international organisations, representatives of civil society, the private sector, and the academic and research communities gathered in Paris on 10 and 11 February 2025 to hold the Al Action Summit. Rapid development of Al technologies represents a major paradigm shift, impacting our citizens, and societies in many ways. In line with the Paris Pact for People and the Planet, and the principles that countries must have ownership of their transition strategies, we have identified priorities and launched concrete actions to advance the public interest and to bridge digital divides through accelerating progress towards the SDGs. Our actions are grounded in three main principles of science, solutions - focusing on open Al models in compliance with countries frameworks - and policy standards, in line with international frameworks. 2. This Summit has highlighted the importance of reinforcing the diversity of the Al ecosystem. It has laid an open, multi-stakeholder and inclusive approach that will enable Al to be human rights based, human-centric, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy while also stressing the need and urgency to narrow the inequalities and assist developing countries in artificial intelligence capacity-building so they can build Al capacities. 3. Acknowledging existing multilateral initiatives on Al, including the United Nations General Assembly Resolutions, the Global Digital Compact, the UNESCO Recommendation on Ethics of Al, the African Union Continental Al Strategy, and the works of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the council of Europe and European Union, the G7 including the Hiroshima Al Process and G20, we have affirmed the follo…
Q&A with David Evan Harris David Evan Harris was named one of Business Insider’s top 100 people in AI in 2023. We sat down with Harris to discuss his views on equitable AI, the militarization of AI, election integrity, and fostering ethical tech ecosystems. David Evan Harris was named one of Business Insider’s top 100 people in AI in 2023. Harris recently began serving as a Member of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Election Security Advisory Committee, convened by Arizona’s Secretary of State. As the Chancellor's Public Scholar at UC Berkeley and Continuing Lecturer at the Haas School of Business, he teaches courses on AI Ethics, Social Movements & Social Media, and Civic Technology. Harris has held positions in the U.S. government and founded the Global Lives Project in 2004, an initiative building a video library of daily life worldwide. We sat down with Harris to discuss his views on equitable AI, the militarization of AI, and fostering ethical tech ecosystems. Sudeshna Mukherjee (SM): Your career spans academia, the private sector, and the nonprofit world. How do you leverage these experiences in your work on Artificial Intelligence (AI)?? David Evan Harris (DEH): Now that I'm doing more work in academia and the nonprofit sector, people value my firsthand experience of how decisions are made inside big tech companies. People in government have called upon me to share my views because they lack access to people with inside experience in tech companies who aren't currently employed there. In the past year, I’ve testified almost a dozen times before legislative bodies—in San Francisco, Sacramento, and most recently, the US Senate. Right now, my big focus is trying to get AI legislation passed. We had two big wins recently with AB 2839 and AB 2655—two bills banning election-related deepfakes—in California just getting signed by the governor. This was the result of the work of the team at the California Initiative for Technology and Democracy (CITED). SM: W…
Some Google employees were aware that OpenAI had harvested YouTube videos for data, two people with knowledge of the companies said. But they didn’t stop OpenAI because Google had also used transcripts of YouTube videos to train its A.I. models, the people said. That practice may have violated the copyrights of YouTube creators. So if Google made a fuss about OpenAI, there might be a public outcry against its own methods, the people said.
I visited the AI Office on a visit last month to Brussels, where I met with numerous AI Office staff, including Alex Moltzau of LinkedIn AI fame, who is now seconded from NORA – The Norwegian Artificial Intelligence Research Consortium. Fun fact for non-Europeans, you may not know that Norway is not in the EU, but their gov'ts collaborate closely, with Alex as living proof.