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The Buzz Blog

Stanford students at Democracy Day creating collages for the Civic Self-Portrait activity under a red tent in a vibrant outdoor setting.

Photo by Carly Chillmon

Stanford students gathered for Democracy Day, an academic holiday filled with events meant to increase civic participation, dialogue, and community-building. One activity, hosted by the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, invited participants to build civic self-portraits to express their values, political beliefs, and personal identities through creative collages.
Headshot of Ashwin Prabu
Stanford’s Tech Ethics and Policy Summer Fellowship program nurtures interdisciplinary tech and social justice leaders. Ashwin Prabu shares his transformative experience and emphasizes the need for accessibility and diverse experiences in tech ethics and policy.
Tree with ballot
This year’s Democracy Day on November 5, 2024, comes at a heightened moment as the nation prepares for another pivotal presidential election. Stanford's Democracy Day is not only reigniting that sense of civic involvement but also taking a different approach—one that’s not only about political participation but also about wellness, empowerment, and dialogue.
Recently, the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, in collaboration with Google DeepMind, convened a group of technologists, philosophers, academics, and ethicists to discuss the potential benefits, harms, and ethical implications of agentic AI systems.
Hexagonal icons in shades of blue against a background of binary code. The icons depict:  Handshake (collaboration), Computer with speech bubbles (communication), Code script (programming), Neural network (AI), Autonomous car (self-driving tech), Robotic arm (automation), and a Server stack (data storage).
At the Workshop on Sociotechnical AI Safety at Stanford, a diverse group of researchers from academia and industry expanded dominant paradigms in AI Safety.