AI: The rules of engagement are being drafted now. It is time to re-contextualize and reframe AI!
RefrAIme exists because this is the critical moment for humans to engage intentionally with AI, not give up on shaping it.
We believe in leveraging AI’s full potential for the broader community, not impeding innovation, but pursuing its benefits responsibly and ethically. Humans need to embrace AI while staying firmly in the driving seat. This is why responsible AI governance is not an option.
RefrAIme will produce high quality content: original articles on AI, technology, and governance, written and proctored by human contributors, never AI-generated. We will also organize conferences and cross-regional, cross-functional exchanges bringing our network together in person and online.
Lawyers, engineers, economics, scholars, philosophers, business entrepreneurs across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas, are invited to exchange unfiltered views and ideas about artificial intelligence.
Terms of reference
RefrAIme is a think tank in formation. While at an early stage we have the direction and the intention to put the argument in public.
We believe human intelligence gives its best when it draws on diversity. Starting with Paris, Singapore and London, RefrAIme is built to be cross-regional, humanly diverse, and cross-functional, because the best ideas emerge when people think together, outside of narrow boundaries.
In essence, AI is a subject that concerns everyone and cannot leave anyone indifferent and un-engaged.
We’re currently building the founding circle, with plans for an editorial review and/or podcast to follow.
RefrAIme will produce high quality content: original articles on AI, technology, and governance, written and proctored by human contributors, never AI-generated. We will also organize conferences and cross-regional, cross-functional exchanges bringing our network together in person and online, to generate new ideas and re-contextualise the larger debate.
The rules for this technology are being written now, setting the social, cultural, economic, technological and regulatory framework. This will impact the way we deploy and use AI in the future. Decisions with a twenty-year plus reach are being taken today.
Standing back from that is not a neutral act. Neither is treating every new capability as a hazard to be contained. We want this technology taken as far as it will usefully go, taken there for the benefit of people and communities. We want a human hand on the wheel the whole way. This is about being intentional about it, keeping humans in the driving seat, not just the loop.
Initially we will initiate this project in the leading tech cities across the globe: Singapore, Paris and London.
We will learn from each other, from diverse practitioners in various geographies, leveraging alterity and differential approaches to this technology. A lawyer may learn more from a business case from another region than from peer discussions in the same jurisdiction. An engineer and a philosopher may also get more insight from conversing together than to stay walled within their respective disciplines.
This draws from the strong conviction that diversity is what makes us great, more intelligent and creative as a species. We want to give a forum for these diverse voices to express themselves and be heard.
AI will not generate our contents. They will be human generated, curated and edited. Our editorial committee that will reflect the human, geographic, and functional diversity that is our cardinal value. We want humans to explore new ideas, discuss them and reframe AI in a meaningful way.
Almost nobody AI concerns gets a say in it. Contributors are not asked to agree with each other, with the founder, or with whatever we published last. We would rather run a piece we think is wrong and well argued than a consensus nobody actually holds. That is an easy thing to promise at this stage, and a fair thing to hold us to later.
Who are we?
- Bar examsFrance, England & Wales, New York
- Current positionHead of Legal, EMEA, global enterprise software
- Currently pursuingExecutive MBA, INSEAD
- QualifyingCIArb, technology arbitration
- Alma matersColumbia University, King's College London, IEP Paris (Sciences Po)
Sebastien Oddos is a lawyer admitted in France, in England and Wales, and in New York.
He heads the legal function for Europe and Latin America at a global enterprise software company, which means these questions reach him as contracts long before they reach anyone as policy. He is reading for an Executive MBA at INSEAD and qualifying with CIArb to work in technology arbitration.
RefrAIme came out of the need to connect the dots between technology, law, the economy, society, philosophy. This is all about the need for a broader context when governing AI.
The founding circle
Being assembled now, one conversation at a time.
We are looking for people who have an opinion and can enrich the debate about AI: lawyers and regulators, engineers and researchers who build the systems, philosophers who can bring a broader perspective, and business entrepreneurs who implement projects day-to-day.
We want to hear from you. Feel free to comment on the project and to tell us how you could contribute. For example, let us know if you would like to publish an article on a subject related to AI. We read everything and answer.
Contact us
- Email s.oddos@refraime.org