“Music and AI: Ethics at the Crossroads” brings together moderator Adisa Banjoko with guests Julie Wenah, Sean Kantrowitz, and X Eyyee for a grounded, very real talk on power, culture, and technology.
Julie Wenah, chair of the Digital Civil Rights Coalition and a veteran of the Obama White House, Airbnb, and Meta, explains how biased design and non diverse teams turn AI into a new engine for discrimination in housing, credit, and content moderation. She stresses the gap between fast moving tech and slow moving law, and calls for communities at the margins to help write the rules.
Sean Kantrowitz, a musician, producer, and media creator with FYI, compares this AI moment to early Hip Hop sampling. The tools are empowering and democratizing, but without protection artists can be exploited in life and in death, with their likeness and style used without consent.
Researcher and engineer X Eyyee, a Richmond native with deep experience at Microsoft and Google, breaks down AI in plain language. They warn about harmful use cases like policing and child welfare, and show how city and state laws can limit abuse. X pushes educators and parents to teach youth how they learn so they can guide their own future with AI, not just be shaped by it.