The Special Course for Youth started on March 16. It is being held for the fourth time in anticipation of the Russian Internet Governance Forum (RIGF 2024). The goal for those who attend the Special Course is to discuss the main issues from the RIGF 2024 program with invited experts, and in the end, to outline the points that reflect the youth view of the current internet governance agenda. The results of this will be publicly presented on April 10 at one of the key sessions of the forum.
This year, 183 applications were filed from seven countries: in addition to Russians, young people from Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, as well as China and the Republic of Malawi applied to take part in the course.
The majority of applicants are no older than 22, followed by applicants in the age group from 23 to 27 years old. In terms of education level, the leaders are masters (61 applications), young specialists and scientists (60 applications), and bachelors (50 applications). In terms of gender, women lead with 56 percent of the applications.
Like previous years, the participants’ occupations are diverse: they are lawyers, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, teachers, journalists, economists, designers and, of course, representatives of ICT specialty firms who are involved in the development, administration and security of cybertechnologies.
In her opening remarks, the course’s director and professor at Bonch-Bruevich Saint Petersburg State University of Telecommunications, Stasya Savelyeva, spoke about how the course is organized and noted the points that required the participants’ attention in order to achieve results: effective mastery of the material and high-quality preparation of youth points.
The first lecture of the course was given by Maria Olkhovskaya and Anna Monakhova from SPLAT Global. They talked about green developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and innovation. Even though the use of AI to monitor production makes it possible to reduce environmental risks, the impact of technology on the environment still remains. Thus, the lecturers focused on the problems associated with preliminary research and the power expended on their organization, and they also touched on the issue of waste disposal.
The second lecture, Data Sharing and Trust, was given by Gleb Shuklin from the Internet Research Institute and the Big Data Association. The expert spoke about the basic concepts and factors of trust when sharing data, the current risks in various areas of data exchange, and also focused on the need to include key elements like a trusted intermediary in exchange procedures in order to organize secure access to data and reduce the risks of losing of trust.
The next lectures under the Special Course will be held on March 23. Experts will talk about the likely evolution of cyber threats by 2030, and also discuss the prospects for global digital governance and cooperation.
