GAD_Schedule2026

How can we ensure fair access and beneficial use of digital technologies for everyone?

The rapid evolution of AI and adaptive systems holds tremendous promise for improving fairness, accessibility, and inclusion in digital environments. At the same time, these technologies can unintentionally reproduce or amplify existing inequities—for example those related to gender, race, or other dimensions of diversity. The 4th Workshop on Gender in Adaptive Design addresses this tension by asking how digital technologies can be designed so that their benefits are shared broadly and equitably. Bringing together economists working on discrimination and diversity with researchers in AI and hybrid adaptive system design, the workshop examines how fairness considerations can be embedded directly into technological development. Our goal is to build a shared understanding of how inclusive, diversity-aware design principles can help ensure that digital technologies promote—not hinder—fair access and beneficial use for everyone.

Key questions include:

-How do AI and adaptive systems interact with existing economic and social inequalities, and how do these interactions affect access to opportunities?

-What behavioral, institutional, or algorithmic mechanisms drive unequal or biased outcomes in human-AI interaction and decision processes?

-What are the most effective technological, organizational, or policy interventions to ensure a fair distribution of the gains from technological innovations?