For the past three years, junior Adrian Klaits has worked to make a positive impact in his local community through political activism, but now he is focused on a different goal: fighting prejudice in artificial intelligence.
Klaits’ work with the group Encode Justice led him and the other leaders to be featured in a CNN article detailing their work.
“You know, most days you see your news updates, but then seeing your name and seeing your face, all your friends’ faces and the cause that you’ve been working for all these years getting the coverage that it needs was extremely heartwarming,” Klaits said.
“I think that it’s an important step in the right direction for uplifting youth voices and the artificial intelligence and human rights movement.”
The group, which was founded in 2020, consists of around 250 members and seeks to fight unethical artificial intelligence use.
“Encode Justice is a coalition of youth activists fighting for human rights and accountability, and justice under AI,” Klaits said.
“The leader reached out to me over social media and asked me to apply to be to a lower position. [The position] was super interesting and something I thought was really important. Eventually as I got to know the leadership team, a position opened up. I applied to be deputy director of advocacy and later got promoted to co-director of advocacy.”
Klaits said he hopes the publicity from the CNN article leads Encode Justice into future success.
“It’s changed a lot for our organization,” he said. “We’ve gotten a lot more coverage and a lot more attention from experts in the field, which I think is going to really aid our battle against AI.”
In the future, Klaits is looking to possibly pursue a political career.
“In the future I’m going to see where I can make the biggest difference,” Klaits said. “In politics, I can make the biggest impact on people’s lives in a positive way.”