Featured Session: Reclaiming our Humanity in the Age of AI

Event ID: PP1148490

Sun, Mar 15, 2026 | 9:00 PM - 10:00 PM

Venue: Salon 6-8 (JW Marriott)

View on Official SXSW

Summary

Too often, AI feels like something that’s done to us, not with us or for us. It will affect every aspect of our lives. But AI is neither poison nor panacea. It is and will be what we make it. Now is the moment to shape the future of AI for people. This panel will explore how we build the ecosystem and infrastructure to ensure that people will benefit the most from AI. Experts in AI, philanthropy, and advocacy, will offer a new way of thinking about AI that moves from Silicon Valley’s mantra of “move fast and break things” to an alternative vision that centers our humanity.

Contributors

Raw Event JSON

Large nested arrays are compacted for page readability. Full payload remains in dataset files.

Open JSON payload
{
  "id": "PP1148490",
  "track": "Tech & AI",
  "focus_area": null,
  "category": "Featured Session",
  "event_id": "PP1148490",
  "event_type": "panel",
  "format": "Featured Session",
  "genre": null,
  "subgenre": null,
  "name": "Featured Session: Reclaiming our Humanity in the Age of AI",
  "presented_by": null,
  "publish_at": "2025-10-01T08:00:00.000-05:00",
  "reservable": true,
  "reservable_id": "PP1148490",
  "reserved": false,
  "date": "2026-03-15",
  "end_time": "2026-03-15T17:00:00.000-05:00",
  "start_time": "2026-03-15T16:00:00.000-05:00",
  "message": null,
  "image": null,
  "credentials": [
    {
      "name": "Music Badge",
      "type": "music"
    },
    {
      "name": "Platinum Badge",
      "type": "platinum"
    },
    {
      "name": "Innovation Badge",
      "type": "innovation"
    },
    {
      "name": "Film & TV Badge",
      "type": "filmtv"
    }
  ],
  "contributors": [
    {
      "id": 77699,
      "company": "John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation",
      "credential_types": [
        "filmtv",
        "innovation",
        "music"
      ],
      "entity_id": 2238603,
      "name": "John Palfrey",
      "speaker_types": [],
      "title": null,
      "image": {
        "alt_text": "John Palfrey",
        "credit": "",
        "url": "https://images.sxsw.com/bluxH3LJAP4-GFZJqj8-N6Abass=/0x0:600x600/600x600/images.sxsw.com/48/c66d3650-0e66-4cc4-8ce2-3e4602abf551/pcid-1617332"
      },
      "speaker_type": "Speaker",
      "details": "Palfrey is a well-respected educator, author, legal scholar, and innovator with expertise in how new technologies are changing learning and education. Throughout his career, he has demonstrated a commitment to rigorous thinking, disruption, and creative solutions often made possible by technology, accessibility of information, and diversity and inclusion.  \r\rActual short bio: John Palfrey is the President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Palfrey is a well-respected educator, author, legal scholar, and innovator with expertise in how new media is changing learning and education. Prior to joining MacArthur, he served as Head of School at Phillips Academy, Andover. Palfrey is the board chair of the United States Impact Investing Alliance; co-chairs the Disability and Inclusion Forum’s Presidents’ Council on Disability Inclusion in Philanthropy; and serves on the board of the Fidelity Non-Profit Management Foundation. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and serves on the governance council. And he is the former board chair of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Palfrey holds a JD from Harvard Law School, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge, and an AB from Harvard College. Palfrey is an accomplished author; his most recent book is Wired Wisdom: How to Age Better Online, which he co-authored with Eszter Hargittai. His other books include Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces: Diversity and Free Expression in Education and Born Digital: How Children Grow Up in a Digital Age, co-authored with Urs Gasser.",
      "links": {},
      "type": "person"
    },
    {
      "id": 77698,
      "company": "Empire Of Ai",
      "credential_types": [
        "filmtv",
        "innovation",
        "music"
      ],
      "entity_id": 2238602,
      "name": "Karen Hao",
      "speaker_types": [],
      "title": "NYT Bestselling Author",
      "image": {
        "alt_text": "Karen Hao",
        "credit": "",
        "url": "https://images.sxsw.com/QVXfk0hHl8DaBlUZvlxF9BphYv8=/651x34:1128x511/600x600/images.sxsw.com/48/8f982b72-5488-4fe1-9658-152c481c3174/pcid-1617331"
      },
      "speaker_type": "Speaker",
      "details": "Hao is the NYT bestselling author of Empire of AI and an award-winning journalist covering the intersections of AI & society. She writes for publications including The Atlantic and leads the Pulitzer Center's AI Spotlight Series, a program training thousands of journalists around the world on how to cover AI. She was previously a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, covering China's science and technology industry. Prior to that, she was a senior editor at MIT Technology Review, where she wrote about the latest research and social impacts of artificial intelligence. Her work won an American Humanist Media Award in 2024 and an American National Magazine Award in 2022 for “outstanding achievement for magazine journalists under the age of 30.”",
      "links": {},
      "type": "person"
    },
    {
      "id": 16391,
      "company": "Distributed Ai Research Institute",
      "credential_types": [
        "filmtv",
        "innovation",
        "music"
      ],
      "entity_id": 1988288,
      "name": "Timnit Gebru",
      "speaker_types": [],
      "title": "Founder & Exec Director",
      "image": {
        "alt_text": "Timnit Gebru",
        "credit": "",
        "url": "https://images.sxsw.com/NvJ4GAioIoLb6bdr5BOpRwQlhXI=/1722x22:5306x3606/600x600/images.sxsw.com/48/54041b50-505e-41f6-8bac-a6e47fe1b43f/pcid-904989"
      },
      "speaker_type": "Speaker",
      "details": "Dr. Timnit Gebru is a reputable AI expert who was formerly co-lead of the Ethical AI research team at Google. She also co-founded Black in AI, a nonprofit that works to increase the presence, inclusion, visibility and health of Black people in the field of AI, and is on the board of AddisCoder, a nonprofit dedicated to teaching algorithms and computer programming to Ethiopian and Jamaican high school students. She has received a number of accolades including Nature’s Ten people who helped shape science and TIME 100’s most influential people. She is currently writing The View from Somewhere, a memoir + manifesto arguing for a technological future that serves our communities instead of one that is used for surveillance, warfare, and the centralization of power by Silicon Valley.",
      "links": {},
      "type": "person"
    }
  ],
  "venue": {
    "accessible": false,
    "age_policy": null,
    "floor": null,
    "id": "V2026",
    "indoor_outdoor": null,
    "name": "Salon 6-8",
    "parent_id": "V0403",
    "parent_venue_name": "JW Marriott",
    "venue_entry_info": null,
    "formats": null,
    "location": {
      "address": "110 E 2nd St.",
      "lat_lon": [
        30.2645713,
        -97.743198
      ],
      "city": "Austin",
      "postal_code": "78701",
      "state": "TX",
      "name": "JW Marriott"
    },
    "root": {
      "accessible": null,
      "age_policy": null,
      "floor": null,
      "id": "V0403",
      "indoor_outdoor": null,
      "name": "JW Marriott",
      "parent_id": null,
      "parent_venue_name": null,
      "venue_entry_info": null,
      "formats": null
    },
    "events": "[omitted 5 venue events]"
  },
  "description": "Too often, AI feels like something that’s done to us, not with us or for us. It will affect every aspect of our lives. But AI is neither poison nor panacea. It is and will be what we make it. Now is the moment to shape the future of AI for people. This panel will explore how we build the ecosystem and infrastructure to ensure that people will benefit the most from AI. Experts in AI, philanthropy, and advocacy, will offer a new way of thinking about AI that moves from Silicon Valley’s mantra of “move fast and break things” to an alternative vision that centers our humanity.",
  "experience_level": "Beginner",
  "accessibility": [
    "Open captioned",
    "Closed captioned"
  ],
  "accessible_venue": false,
  "add_bcl_url": false,
  "add_slido": false,
  "age_policy": null,
  "american_sign_language": false,
  "apple_url": null,
  "audio_description": false,
  "caption_url": null,
  "closed_captioned": true,
  "cpe_credit": false,
  "has_subtitles": false,
  "hash_tags": [],
  "high_sensory_experience": false,
  "live": false,
  "long_description": "Too often, AI feels like something that’s done to us, not with us or for us. It will affect every aspect of our lives. But AI is neither poison nor panacea. It is and will be what we make it. Now is the moment to shape the future of AI for people. This panel will explore how we build the ecosystem and infrastructure to ensure that people will benefit the most from AI. Experts in AI, philanthropy, and advocacy, will offer a new way of thinking about AI that moves from Silicon Valley’s mantra of “move fast and break things” to an alternative vision that centers our humanity.",
  "meeting_url": null,
  "meeting_url_live": false,
  "mentorly_url": null,
  "mobile_audio_url": null,
  "open_captioned": true,
  "playlist_tag": null,
  "rebroadcast": false,
  "recommended_ids": [],
  "search_conversions": null,
  "short_program": false,
  "slido_url": null,
  "sort": "FEATURED SESSION: RECLAIMING OUR HUMANITY IN THE AGE OF AI",
  "source": "Official",
  "squad_up_url": null,
  "stream_embed": null,
  "stream_id": null,
  "stream_url": null,
  "strobe_warning": false,
  "subdiscipline": null,
  "summit": null,
  "summit_display_name": null,
  "tags": [
    {
      "id": 950,
      "name": "Storytelling",
      "created_at": "2016-11-04T11:43:51.305-05:00",
      "updated_at": "2024-02-05T16:58:21.488-06:00",
      "sort": "STORYTELLING",
      "alpha": "S"
    },
    {
      "id": 2114,
      "name": "AI",
      "created_at": "2020-01-17T14:51:44.091-06:00",
      "updated_at": "2026-02-17T20:42:14.828-06:00",
      "sort": "AI",
      "alpha": "A"
    }
  ],
  "talent_attending": null,
  "title_only": false,
  "track_display_name": "Tech & AI track sponsored by IBM",
  "trailer_id": null,
  "trailer_url": null,
  "video_on_demand": null,
  "vimeo_id": null,
  "vod": false,
  "xr_project_type": null,
  "youtube_id": null,
  "related_sales_client": null
}