The Department of State of the United States and the IE Universitywill launch the Tech4Democracy Challengea series of regional start-up and scale-up competitions that build and promote democracy-affirming technologies and help ensure that democratic values underpin technological development.
Through this initiative, the global university based in Spain will search for startups and scaleups and entrepreneurial projects around the world, whose technology supports democratic development.
The institution will work with international researchers, investors and entrepreneurs to identify key innovations in areas such as data management in politics, the fight against disinformation, the defense of transparency and accessibility of government data and services, responsibility in artificial intelligence and machine learning
The challenges will begin in the coming months in various democratic countries and will continue throughout the entire period of action of the Summit for Democracy.
Tech4Democracy Challenge will bring together researchers, innovators, investors and entrepreneurs to identify and highlight key innovations.
The institution explained that the project will be carried out in three of its centers: the Center for the Governance of Change, which is an applied research institution that works on the governance of emerging technologies; the PublicTechLabwhich is an academic action tank, dedicated to promoting the use of technology by the public sector and the Entrepreneurship Centeran innovative initiative that seeks to promote entrepreneurship and has extensive experience in holding thematic contests for startups around the world.
Manuel Muñiz, rector of IE Universitysaid that as a global academic institution with a strong commitment to the values of democracy, openness and diversity, at IE University, “we are honored to contribute to the effort launched by President Joe Biden to promote technologies that affirm democracy”.
For his part, Dr. Eric Lander, Science Advisor to the President and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said: “We can and must harness innovation to advance technologies that have the potential to further our shared democratic values, including privacy, freedom of expression, access to information, transparency, justice, inclusion and equity”.
He said that it is not a guarantee that any given technology will support democratic values, as it requires constant vigilance and constant commitment. So people need to make sure that technology is developed and used responsibly.
Manuel Muñiz, will participate next Friday in the Summit for Democracy in a debate on the expansion of digital authoritarianism and the development of technologies with democratic values.