Avijit Ghosh delivers his talk, “Our Rights in an AI Infused Society,” at the What Are We Talking About When We Talk About AI? Symposium. October 9, 2025 at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute.

In this episode, Avijit Ghosh examines how artificial intelligence has transformed human rights to the point where it’s increasingly being used to allocate goods and resources, such as deciding who gets matched to certain jobs. AI has fundamentally changed social and economic relationships between people and companies with governmental regulation slow to respond. These rapid technological changes have also resulted in complications regarding data access wherein people’s intellectual property rights are left vulnerable to a company’s unregulated licensing practices. In other words, the absence of regulation in AI has allowed companies to make their own rules when it comes to licensing, often to the detriment of people and rife with bias. For Ghosh, technological development can be done properly if the sole focus is not chasing profit. The future of data access and the role of the human within represents a delicate balance that will continue to be reconfigured as technological progress abounds.

Prefer to watch? Check out this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/dfZ2iUTdsH0

Learn more about “Reading Between the Lines,” the collaboration between UConn and UIR that produced this podcast.

Meriem Regragui (Université Internationale de Rabat) delivers her talk, “How Will AI Transform Labour Rights?” at the What Are We Talking About When We Talk About AI? Symposium. October 9, 2025 at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute.

In this episode, Meriem Regragui outlines the increasingly complicated relationship between AI and labor rights, particularly around how laws should be enacted to protect workers and their rights to dignity, privacy, and fair treatment. This issue is not only local, but also international in a way that forces a reconfiguration of employability, social protection, and redistribution. The revaluing of labor has thus become foundational to understanding the role of AI within broader conversations of labor rights. For Regragui, one of the most pressing issues for the future will be to clarify from a legal perspective what an equitable right to work will look like in the AI era. The human being must ultimately be at the center of these discussions.

Prefer to watch? Check out this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/9uI7J22iySU

Learn more about “Reading Between the Lines,” the collaboration between UConn and UIR that produced this podcast.

Hakim Hafidi (Université Internationale de Rabat) delivers his talk, “AI Literacy in the Age of Synthetic Content” at the What Are We Talking About When We Talk About AI? Symposium. October 9, 2025 at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute.

Hakim Hafidi analyzes the growing capabilities of autonomous agents within the realm of content creation and dissemination online and how to understand human interactions with this content. The expansion of this “synthetic content” has complicated larger questions about how human users can decipher what’s “real” or the “truth” and how that influences their engagement with generated content. Hafidi refers to these AI-agents as “LLM brains” that possess the capability to reason, generate, collaborate, and share information at rates much faster and more prolific than a human can. However, this boom in synthetic content is not without a litany of problems including the ability to differentiate the real from the fake, the importance of reality-based community connections, and the intent of the companies behind AI content.

Prefer to watch? Check out this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/9uI7J22iySU

Learn more about “Reading Between the Lines,” the collaboration between UConn and UIR that produced this podcast.