GIX Master’s Course Features Society + Technology at UW Affiliates Lecture Series

The 2025 cohort of students in the Society + Technology at UW course for the Global Innovation Exchange. Photo credit: Justin Horne

Society + Technology at UW is pleased to announce a renewed partnership with the University of Washington’s Global Innovation Exchange (GIX) for 2026. This is the second year of collaboration that brings affiliated scholars from across the UW community into a lecture series for the Master of Science in Technology Innovation (MSTI) program for the course, The History and Future of Technology: Responsible Innovation.

Led by Monika Sengul-Jones, Ph.D., the course draws on Science and Technology Studies (STS) and guest lectures from Society + Technology at UW affiliates to guide students in understanding technology as a socio-technical process shaped by—and shaping—structures of power.

Guest Speakers

(Alphabetical Order)

Jessica L. Beyer

Topic: Information Sharing and Cybersecurity
Jessica L. Beyer is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at UW Seattle and a leader of the school’s Cybersecurity Initiative. Her award-winning research examines international technology politics, online communities, and dis/misinformation, including projects on COVID-19 information flows and Internet of Things security. She is an expert in the politics of cybersecurity and mentors student research across multiple programs. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the UW Population Health Initiative. Jessica is the author of Expect Us: Online Communities and Political Mobilization (Oxford University Press, 2014).

Alex Bolton

Topic: Tech Policy
Alex Bolton is Executive Director of the Tech Policy Lab at UW Seattle and a 2025-26 Non-Resident Research Fellow with the Siegel Family Endowment. The Tech Policy Lab is an interdisciplinary collaboration crossing the School of Law, the Information School, and the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. Alex leads the strategy and programming, convenes campus-wide discussions on technology policy, and co-teaches courses on technology law, policy, and ethics. He is also a founding member of the Public Tech Leadership Collaborative Steering Committee, a program of Data & Society. Alex previously worked in state government and higher education, including for former Washington Governor and U.S. Senator Daniel J. Evans. He holds a J.D., M.P.A., and B.A. from the University of Washington.

Agnieszka Jeżyk

Topic: Tech Anxiety
Agnieszka Jeżyk is the Maria Kott Endowed Assistant Professor of Polish Studies in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at UW Seattle. Her research focuses on marginal subjectivities, avant-garde literature, and representations of technology in Central and Eastern Europe, with an emphasis on psychoanalysis, horror, and material culture in the Cold War period. She has held academic positions at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Toronto. Her work connects literary and cultural analysis to broader questions about technology, affect, and modernity.

Beth Kolko

Topic: Responsible and Creative Innovation
Beth Kolko is a Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at UW Seattle. Her work focuses on human-centered entrepreneurship and the role of design in shaping more equitable forms of innovation. She leads initiatives such as REgroup, which brings together students, founders, and investors to rethink entrepreneurship, and previously directed labs focused on digital inclusion and technology design. Kolko is also co-founder and former CEO of Shift Labs, a company developing low-cost medical devices for emerging markets. Her career crosses academia, industry, and global consulting, with experience at Microsoft Research, the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard, and organizations in multiple countries.

Community partner event: ethics & tech conference on technology, energy, and security on May 15, 2026

Featuring Saadia Pekkanen (UW International Studies), S+T at UW affiliate, and space law and security scholar

Society + Technology at UW is pleased to share that our community partner, the Seattle University Technology Ethics Initiative, is hosting its fourth annual Ethics & Tech Conference on May 15, 2026. This year’s theme—Technology, Energy, and Security—examines how emerging technologies are reshaping energy systems and security landscapes, raising important questions about governance, resilience, equity, and public trust.

The day-long event will feature a range of speakers working across technology, policy, and infrastructure, notably, Saadia Pekkanen (International Studies, UW Seattle), an affiliate with S+T at UW, member of the Tech and Society Task Force, and leader in the field of space law and security studies.

Details:
Ethics & Tech Conference: Technology, Energy, and Security
Friday, May 15, 2026
8:30 AM – 4:00 PM
Pigott Auditorium, Seattle University
901 12th Ave Sinegal Building, Suite 140, Seattle, WA 98122

Learn more and register: https://www.seattleu.edu/ethics-tech-conference/

Note: Seattle University Technology Ethics Initiative is offering a 25% discount on tickets. Use the code UWStudent for 25% off. ID will be checked at the door.

Giveaway winners announced for S+T at UW survey

The results are in! The Society + Technology at UW initiative review survey reached a 59% response rate! Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond. A summary report will be shared soon and every response was read.

As promised, when we reached over 50% participation rate, all members of the Society + Technology at UW listserv were entered into a random drawing for two books: The AI Con by Emily Bender (Linguistics, UW Seattle) and Alex Hanna, and Law or Technology: A Methodological Approach by Ryan Calo (Law and Information, UW Seattle).

Well, drumroll, please, the lucky winners are:

Annuska Zolyomi (Computing and Software Systems, UW Bothell)

Annuska Zolyomi is an assistant professor in the School of STEM in the Department of Computing and Software Systems at UW Bothell, where she brings an inclusive lens to human-computer interaction and software engineering pedagogy. She teaches courses on usability, accessibility, and co-design, and her research focuses on the experiences of users who identify as blind or low-vision, neurodivergent, autistic, and more. Read her work to discover why in 2016, users gave up on Twitter before it became X (clue: it wasn’t to signal disagreement with the online politics, but something else entirely). Learn more here: https://faculty.washington.edu/annuska/

Martin Saveski (Information, UW Seattle)

Martin Saveski is an assistant professor in the Information School at UW Seattle. His work develops tools for analyzing large-scale social data to better understand online social structures and behaviors, while also shaping the design of digital systems. One of his papers that I’ve read explores how social media platforms reward certain human values—personal agency, stimulation—and then proposes how it might be redesigned to support other values. Who decides on which values are important? And how can such values be known and changed? You can read more here: https://faculty.washington.edu/msaveski/

Annuska and Martin, please get in touch to claim your books!

Not on the Society + Technology at UW mailing list? Join here!

Register now for ‘The Risks and Realities of AI Chatbots’ event on April 7, 2026 at 6 PM at the Seattle Central Library

The Risks and Realities of AI Chatbots event promo

This article is crossposted from the Center for an Informed Public, and reproduced in full.

AI chatbots are everywhere. They answer questions, offer advice, and even provide emotional support. But what happens when they hallucinate or deliver unreliable information? Who’s responsible when these tools cause real harm?

Kashmir Hill of The New York Times and Jeff Horwitz of Reuters have been investigating questions like these for years. Hill has broken major stories on facial recognition, privacy, and AI systems. Horwitz’s reporting has exposed how tech companies handle harmful content, often revealing significant failures. Both have documented serious problems with how these technologies actually work in practice.

In a special conversation on April 7, 6-7:30 p.m. at the Seattle Central Library, moderated by Monica Nickelsburg, host of KUOW Public Radio’s Booming podcast, Hill and Horwitz will share what they’ve learned about AI chatbot harms. They’ll discuss dangerous misinformation, unexpected safety failures, and the question of corporate accountability. As chatbots become more common in our daily lives, what should users know? Where are the gaps in how these systems get tested and released?

The Risks and Realities of AI Chatbots discussion, co-sponsored by the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, Tech Policy Lab and Technology & Social Change Group, in partnership with KUOW Public Radio, will include time for your questions.

The discussion will be preceded by a 20-minute conversation featuring M. Linsey Kitchens, a teacher-librarian at Sedro-Woolley High School in Sedro-Woolley, Washington, and CIP co-founder and Information School Associate Dean for Research Jevin West. Kitchens, a former Center for an Informed Public Community Fellowship member, will share insights from her recent work adapting lessons from the Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? AI humanities online course — co-developed by West and CIP faculty member Carl Bergstrom — for her high school students who then shared these skills and lessons with local senior citizens during an innovative local intergenerational learning event in February.

Event Information

Risks and Rewards of AI Chatbots
Event Date: April 7, 2026
Event Time: 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Location: Seattle Central Library, 1st Floor Auditorium
1000 4th Avenue, Seattle
This event is free, but register to attend.