The future of technology is about more than AI: A conversation about right sized technology

  • Panel
  • Grande Halle
  • Thursday 21.05 — 16:00 - 17:15

Organising Institution

Mozilla Foundation

Belgium

Mozilla is a global nonprofit dedicated to keeping the Internet a public resource that is open and accessible to all.
Public value does not always align with immediate market returns. At Mozilla Foundation, we believe that when people design technology for the problems they understand best, those technologies will find their communities and outlive the boom and bust hype cycles of the next big thing. Profit-driven models predominantly push technology toward rapid growth, commercialization and market validation, often forcing compromises that undermine community values. These growth models tend to yield technology with both outsized data collection practices and outsized environmental impacts. But right-sized alternatives do exist.

Questions to be answered

  1. How can policymakers incentivize an ecosystem that privileges mission-aligned technologies?
  2. How can businesses design products for real communities and not only for market growth?
  3. How do principles like user choice, agency, interoperability, modularity, and open source contribute to the success of these technologists? What about circularity, right to repair, and ecodesign?
  4. How can consumers - how can people - express their preferences for worthy technology, that serves us and that can be sustained over time and within planetary boundaries?

Moderator

Claire Pershan

Mozilla Foundation - Belgium

Claire is the Mozilla Foundation’s Brussels-based Advocacy Lead. She connects Mozilla Foundation’s community to policy discussions that affect them and to which they can contribute, in particular in the areas of data agency, privacy, and the open web. Previously Policy Coordinator at the EU DisinfoLab and Project Manager at Renaissance Numerique, she has also worked as a technology expert consultant for Internews and for the European Commission Joint Research Centre

Speaker

Benoît Courty

CodeCarbon - France

Benoît Courty is a seasoned data scientist with over 25 years of experience at the intersection of technology, public policy, and innovation. He serves as an in-house data scientist at the French National Assembly, where he contributes to the open-source Assembly’s online policy simulator. Benoît is also a member of Data For Good France, where he discovered CodeCarbon in 2020 and became its main contributor. On a volunteer basis, he now serves as President of the CodeCarbon non-profit, which is backed by the Mozilla Foundation Incubator.

Speaker

Nadia Nadesan

Civic Tech/Platoniq - Spain

Nadia Nadesan is a researcher and design facilitator based in Madrid working at the intersections of AI governance, participatory design, and qualitative research. She leads and advises transnational projects on civic technology, data governance, and public space, with a focus on democratic oversight of AI systems and participatory approaches to their design and procurement. As research lead for the Small AI stream and a former fellow at Open Future, she explores context-aware, community-rooted alternatives to large-scale AI, drawing on collaborations with civic tech collectives, cultural institutions, and design justice networks.

Speaker

Agnès Crepet

Fairphone, Le Mouton Numerique - Netherlands

Agnès Crepet is Head of Software Engineering at Fairphone, a social enterprise creating an ethical, modular, and repairable smartphone. She co-founded Ninja Squad in France, which uses and promotes open source and publishes pay-what-you-want computer books. She co-founded MiXiT, an annual tech event in France since 2011, which works towards greater diversity and ethics in tech. She also serves on the boards of Le Mouton Numérique, a techno-critical collective; Commown, the responsible electronics cooperative; and Jumanji, a group of B Corp startups reinventing our lifestyles within planetary boundaries. She has also been part of the Duchess France collective since 2010, which increases the visibility of women in IT.