Digital Life Seminar Archive
Lee McGuigan
Cornell Tech | Digital Life Initiative
Design Choice: Mechanism Design’s Digital Drift
Mechanism design is a form of optimization developed in economic theory. It casts economists as institutional engineers, choosing an outcome and then arranging a set of market rules and conditions to achieve it. In this paper, Lee McGuigan, Jake Goldenfein, and Salome Viljoen argue that mechanism design, applied in algorithmic environments, has become a tool for producing information domination, distributing social costs in ways that benefit designers, and controlling and coordinating participants in multi-sided platforms.
Serge Egelman
International Computer Science Institute | University of California, Berkeley
Taking Responsibility for Someone Else's Code: Studying the Privacy Behaviors of Mobile Apps at Scale
Modern software development has embraced the concept of "code reuse," which is the practice of relying on third-party code to avoid "reinventing the wheel" (and rightly so). While this practice saves developers time and effort, it also creates liabilities: the resulting app may behave in ways that the app developer does not anticipate. This can cause very serious issues for privacy compliance: while an app developer did not write all of the code in their app, they are nonetheless responsible for it. In this talk, I will present research that my group has conducted to automatically examine the privacy behaviors of mobile apps vis-à-vis their compliance with privacy regulations.
Emma Pierson
Microsoft Research | Jacobs Institute/Cornell Tech (2021)
Modeling COVID with mobility data to understand inequality and guide reopening
In this paper, we develop a model of COVID spread that uses dynamic mobility networks, derived from US cell phone data, to capture the hourly movements of millions of people from local neighborhoods (census block groups, or CBGs) to points of interest (POIs) such as restaurants, grocery stores, or religious establishments.
Cory Doctorow
Author, Activist, Journalist and Blogger
Oligarchy and Technology
Software has eaten the world and crapped out a dystopia: a place where Abbot Labs uses copyright claims to stop people with diabetes from taking control over their insulin dispensing and where BMW is providing seat-heaters as an-over-the-air upgrade that you have to pay for by the month. Companies have tried this stuff since the year dot, but Thomas Edison couldn't send a patent enforcer to your house to make sure you honored the license agreement on your cylinder by only playing it on an Edison phonograph. Today, digital systems offer perfect enforcement for the pettiest, greediest grifts imaginable.
Joseph Turow
Annenberg School for Communication | University of Pennsylvania
Seductive Surveillance and Social Change: The Rise of the Voice Intelligence Industry
Drawing from my forthcoming book The Voice Catchers (Yale U Press, early 2021), I pose two key questions about this new development in the United States: How has the voice intelligence industry been able to gain the kind of social traction that has tens of millions of people giving their up voiceprints to so-called “intelligent assistants”? And in the face of this widespread shift to voice bio-profiling, what social policies should concerned citizens advocate to slow the process and implement regulations regarding this new form of surveillance?
Yaël Eisenstat & Carrie Goldberg
Digital Life Initiative | C.A. Goldberg, PLLC
"With Great Power Comes... No Responsibility?"
Who bears responsibility for the real-world consequences of technology? This question has been unduly complicated for decades by the 1996 legislation that provides immunity from liability to platforms that host third-party content: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
MC Forelle
Cornell Tech
When the Software Rubber Hits the Mechanical Road: Regulating the Repair and Modification of the Modern Car
What happens when two different technologies, historically governed by different regulatory regimes, are combined into a single, hybrid, consumer device?
Omid Poursaeed
Cornell Tech
Deepfakes and Adversarial Examples: Fooling Humans and Machines
In this talk, Omid Pouraseed will discuss recent methods for adversarial data manipulation, and mention possible defense strategies against them. Although manipulations of visual and auditory media are as old as media themselves, the recent advent of deepfakes has marked a turning point in the creation of fake content.
Madelyn R. Sanfilippo & Yan Shvartzshnaider
Princeton University | New York University
Privacy/Disaster: When Information Flows Are Taken Out of Context
Privacy is contextual. Everyday, we manage different contexts and adjust our privacy expectations accordingly. The theory of Contextual Integrity offers a way to capture contextual norms and a heuristic to analyze privacy. This analysis is especially helpful to detect situations in which the system designers take advantage of well-established, contextual privacy expectations, to encourage user disclosures without adhering to governing norms. For example, imagine an app that is marked to you as a patient/doctor communication tool in a medical context, yet it is actually an insurance company trying to get more information on you.
Diana Freed
Cornell Tech
Improving the Privacy and Safety for Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence
Diana will present her research on technology-mediated abuse in IPV, threat models, and recent work from Cornell Tech's Intimate Partner Violence clinic.
Frank Pasquale
University of Maryland
Machines Judging Humans: The Promise and Perils of Formalizing Evaluative Criteria
Over the past decade, algorithmic accountability has become an important concern for social scientists, computer scientists, journalists, and lawyers.
Chris Sagers
Cleveland State University
United States v Apple: Competition in America
United States v. Apple: Competition in America examines the misunderstandings and exaggerations that firms have raised throughout antitrust history to justify collusion and monopoly.
Hongyi Wen
Cornell Tech
Recommender Systems with Users in the Loop
Recommender systems have come to serve as the “homepage” for users to access informational items such videos, music, books, etc.
Zachary Chase Lipton
Carnegie Mellon University
Fairness & Interpretability in Machine Learning and the Dangers of Solutionism
Supervised learning algorithms are increasingly operationalized in real-world decision-making systems. Unfortunately, the nature and desiderata of real-world tasks rarely fit neatly into the supervised learning contract.
Kate Klonick
St. John's University Law School
Facebook's Oversight Board
For a decade and a half, Facebook has dominated the landscape of digital social networks and has evolved to become one of the most powerful arbiters of online speech.
Eugene Bagdasaryan
Cornell Tech
Evaluating Privacy Preserving Techniques in Machine Learning
Modern applications frequently require access to sensitive data, such as facial images, typing history, or health records, thereby increasing the need for expressive privacy protection.
Tal Zarsky
University of Haifa
When a Small Change Makes a Big Difference
A growing body of scholarship is addressing the risks of opaque analyses as well as the fear of hidden biases and discrimination that may come along with automated decision-making.
Michael Sobolev
Cornell Tech
Behavioral Science in the Digital Economy
Over the last decade, behavioral science made significant progress and impact in academic research as well as impacted policy in commercial organizations and governments. At the same time, the rise of digital technologies and the digital economy provides exciting opportunities and presents challenges for the next decade of behavioral science. In this talk, Sobolev will explore novel avenues for behavioral science research in the digital economy.
Kashmir Hill
The New York Times
Losing Face: The Privacy Challenges as Facial Recognition Goes Mainstream
Hill will discuss the ethics of building facial recognition databases that use the faces of people who have not consented to taking part.
Yiqing Hua
Cornell Tech
Understanding Adversarial Interactions Against Politicians on Social Media
J Nathan Matias
Cornell University
Advancing Flourishing Digital Societies through Citizen Science
Lee McGuigan
Cornell Tech
Dreams and Designs to Optimize Advertising
James Grimmelmann
Cornell Tech
Spyware vs Spyware
Ben Fish
Microsoft Research
Relational Equality: Modeling Unfairness in Hiring via Social Standing
Niva Elkin-Koren
University of Haifa
Contesting Algorithms
Sorelle Friedler
Haverford College
Fairness in Networks: Understanding Disadvantage and Information Access
Salome Viljoen & Ben Green
Cornell Tech | Harvard University
Algorithmic Realism: Expanding the Boundaries of Algorithmic Thought
Kiel Brennan-Marquez, Karen Levy, & Daniel Susser
UConn School of Law | Cornell University | Pennsylvania State University
Strange Loops: Apparent vs Actual Involvement in Automated Decision-Making
Ido Sivan-Sevilla
Cornell Tech
Complementaries and Contradictions: National Security and Privacy Risks in US Federal Policy, 1968-2018
Kathleen R McKeown
Columbia University
Where Natural Language Processing Meets Societal Needs
Alondra Nelson
SSRC, Institute for Advanced Study
"I am Large, I Contain Multitudes"
Jake Goldenfein
Cornell Tech
Private Companies and Scholarly Infrastructure: The Question of Google Scholar
Ifeoma Ajunwa
Cornell University
The Paradox of Automation as Anti-Bias Intervention
Doug Rushkoff
CUNY Queens
Team Human: Optimizing Technology for Human Beings (Instead of the Other Way Around)
Sunny Consolvo
Studies of Privacy-, Security-, and Abuse-Related Beliefs and Practices
Maggie Jack
Cornell Tech
Localization of Transnational Tech Platforms and Liminal Privacy Practices in Cambodia
Isabelle Zaugg
Columbia University
Precarity and Hope for Digitally-Disadvantaged Languages (And Their Scripts)
Jessica Vitak
University of Maryland
Privacy, Security, and Ethical Challenges in the Era of Big Data
Angela Zhou
Cornell Tech
Towards an Ecology of Care for Data-Driven Decision Making
Moran Yemini
Yale University
The New Irony of Free Speech
Lauren van Haaften-Schick
Cornell University
"The Artist's Contract" (1971) to Smart Contracts: Remedies for Inequity in the Art Market in Historical Perspective
David Pozen
Columbia Law School
Loyal to Whom? A Skeptical View of Information Fiduciaries
Brad Smith
Microsoft
Facial Recognition: Coming to a Street Corner Near You
Luke Stark
Microsoft Research
Darwin's Animoji: Histories of Emotion, Animation, and Racism in Everyday Facial Recognition
Elizabeth O'Neill
Cornell Tech
The Ethics of Artificial Ethics Advisors
Finn Brunton
NYU Steinhardt
Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Utopians, Anarchists, and Technologists Who Built Cryptocurrency
Fabian Okeke
Cornell Tech
Privacy and Equity in Developing Countries
Laura Forlano
Cornell Tech
Techno-Optimistic Smart City Imaginaries: A Patchwork of Four Urban Futures
Timnit Gebru
Google AI
Understanding the Limitations of AI: When Algorithms Fail
Nirvan Tyagi
Cornell Tech
Survey of Security and Privacy Concerns in Machine Learning
Joseph Reagle
Northeastern University
The Digital Complicity of Facebook's Growth Hackers & Chip-Implanting Biohackers
David Robinson
Upturn, Cornell University
Kidney Allocation Policy as Algorithmic Governance
Francesca Rossi
IBM AI Ethics Global Leader
Ethically Bounded AI
Eran Toch
Cornell Tech
Smart Cities/Digital Neighborhoods: Privacy, Equality, and Adoption of Urban Technologies
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The idea of the Smart City is becoming central to the adoption of technologies that enhance and regulate urban spaces. At the same time, smart cities bring about new challenges, as diverse populations interact with an array of new technologies, most of them are based on large-scale data collection and with increasing effects on residents lives.
Glen Weyl
Microsoft Research
Liberal Radicalism for the Digital Age
The present architecture of the digital economy is leading to unprecedented concentrations of economic and political power.
Jake Goldenfein
Cornell Tech
The Profiling Potential of Computer Vision
Over the past decade, researchers have been investigating new technologies for categorizing people based on physical attributes alone.
Elana Zeide
Seton Hall Law School
How Ed Tech Shapes Pedagogy & Policy (& Vice Versa)
David Bernet
Film Screening: Democracy
This documentary unveils the political intrigue in the struggle for new data protection legislation in the EU.
Rishab Nithyanand
Data & Society
Anonymity & Ad Tracking: Insights from Measurement Studies
Kadija Ferryman
Data & Society
Precision Medicine & Fairness
Yafit Lev-Aretz
New York University
Corporate Data & Public Ends
Beth Simone Noveck
GovLab
CrowdLaw: Experiments in Participatory Urban Lawmaking
Natasha Dow Schull
NYU Steinhardt
Wearable Technology as Self Regulation
Solon Barocas
Cornell University
Allocative Versus Representational Harms in Machine Learning
Nicki Dell, Tom Ristenpart, & Karen Levy
Cornell Tech | Cornell University
Digital Safety and Security for Victims of Intimate Partner Violence
Trebor Scholz
The New School
This is What a Democratic Platform Economy Loosk Like
Matt Jones & Chris Wiggins
Columbia University | New York Times
Data Literacy & Ethics in the Lab
Amanda Levendowski
NYU School of Law
Artificial Intelligence, Bias & Copyright Complications