Digital Life Initiative | Ethics | Policy | Politics | Quality of Life JULY 2021 |
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WELCOME Summertime Greetings It’s a joy to see the slow reawakening of DLI HQ at Cornell Tech! We’re excited to highlight some of our latest Critical Reflections, and bring you a roundup of Spring DLI Seminars and other news. – TEAM DLI |
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CRITICAL REFLECTIONS DLI Debate: Does AI Pose an Existential Threat to Humanity? Moderated by John Etchemendy (Stanford University), and captained by Salomé Viljoen and Meg Young (DLI Postdocs) Will robots take over the planet? Will they undermine or erode what it means to be human in other more subtle or unanticipated ways? Is the preoccupation with intelligent machines a red herring? Or is the biggest threat posed by intelligent machines the affordances they provide to the humans who wield them? DLI's inaugural debate was inspired by thinking through the provocations posed by the impact of ‘intelligent’ technologies on the future of human life. Stanford Provost Emeritus and Co-director of the Institute for Human-Centered AI, John Etchemendy, moderated as two talented teams of DLI members, captained by Salomé Viljoen and Meg Young, thrashed out the pros and cons of AI in the digital age. A full debate transcript is available, as well as a recording via our DLI Media Channel. READ TRANSCRIPT or WATCH DEBATE |
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CRITICAL REFLECTIONS Networked Authoritarianism at the Edge By Maggie Jack (DLI Visiting Postdoc) Researchers conducted a qualitative study to examine how village-level officials in rural Cambodia utilize Facebook to supplement and extend long-standing patterns of information control. The Tatmadaw generals’ digital strategy was a key part of their coup. On Monday, the military government made mobile internet access intermittent. On Wednesday, the government blocked Facebook and its products (including Whatsapp and Instagram) to internet users on Myanmar-based telecoms networks. On Friday, Myanmar-based users could not access Twitter. When in-person protests raged over the weekend in Yangon, users found themselves unable to use the internet at all. The use of digital media to spread propaganda as well as internet shutdowns are now important tools of authoritarian ruling and take-over strategies. These same tools are used for surveillance and new extensions of the state into private lives. READ MORE |
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CRITICAL REFLECTIONS Privacy & Digital Contact Tracing By Brian Ray (Cleveland State University), and Jane Bambauer (University of Arizona) The pandemic revealed resistances to thinking how contact tracing apps allow health officials to collect information responsibly, and to aid their efforts to combat the virus while still respecting privacy norms in the public-health context. Imagine if a major health system developed an app for detecting new cases of COVID-19 more than a week before a person has symptoms or has a viral load large enough to be detected using PCR tests. In light of the potential—the possibility of saving thousands of lives—it would seem unreasonable to declare that the privacy risks should prevent us from piloting it. We should at least beta test these tools with large enough numbers of people to ensure they work well enough (and are accountable and privacy-protecting enough, too). Yet that’s precisely what happened with proposals early in the COVID-19 pandemic to repurpose a limited range of location information that people already routinely collect and share with private companies, and use it for digital contact tracing. READ MORE |
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CRITICAL REFLECTIONS Privacy Policies as Contextual Integrity: Beyond Rules Compliance By Yan Shvartzshnaider (DLI Alum,York University), Madelyn Rose Sanfilippo (University of Illinois), and Noah Apthorpe (Colgate University) Current privacy policies are not written with the CI framework in mind and therefore are poorly structured for consumers to determine their privacy implications. There is wide scholarly agreement that privacy policies do not adequately inform users about companies’ information practices. Privacy policies are typically too long for rapid comprehension yet remain incomplete descriptions of company behavior. They famously use ambiguous terms that can be confusing, vague, and misleading to the reader. So disconnected from any common understanding of the notion, there have been calls to strip them of the “privacy” title and rename them as data management policies because their content does not meaningfully communicate privacy implications. READ MORE |
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BERKLEY TECHNOLOGY LAW JOURNAL Through the Handoff Lens: Competing Visions of Autonomous Futures By Jake Goldenfein (DLI Alum, Melbourne University), Deirdre Mulligan (University of California, Berkeley), Helen Nissenbaum (DLI Director), and Wendy Ju (DLI Affiliate Faculty, Cornell Tech) The Handoff model is a conceptual framework for analyzing the political and ethical contours of performing a function with different configurations of human and technical actors. The development of autonomous vehicles is often presented as a linear trajectory from total human control to total autonomous control, with only technical and regulatory hurdles in the way. But below the smooth surface of innovation-speak lies a battle over competing autonomous vehicle futures with ramifications well beyond driving. Car companies, technology companies, and others are pursuing alternative autonomous vehicle visions, and each involves an entire reorganization of society, politics, and values. Instead of subscribing to the story of inevitable linear development, this paper explores three archetypes of autonomous vehicles—advanced driver-assist systems, fully driverless cars, and connected cars—and the futures they foretell as the ideal endpoints for different classes of actors. We introduce and use the Handoff Model—a conceptual model for analyzing the political and ethical contours of performing a function with different configurations of human and technical actors—in order to expose the political and social reconfigurations intrinsic to those different futures. READ MORE |
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NEW MEDIA & SOCIETY Copyright and the Modern Car: Colliding Visions of the Public Good in DMCA Section 1201 Anti-Circumvention Proceedings By MC Forelle (Cornell Presidential & DLI Visiting Postdoc) The US copyright paradigm must radically shift to accept that copyright has communal benefits and harms that extend beyond economic impact, especially as software-embedded devices are starting to have far-ranging effects on communities and the environment. In 2015, a debate unfolded over who should be allowed to access vehicular software for the purposes of repair, maintenance, and modification. Conducted as part of the triennial anticircumvention exemptions proceedings of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, this debate surfaced tensions that had long been brewing about copyright’s applicability to computer software, with the added complication that rather than personal computers, the devices being discussed were cars, trucks, and tractors. At stake was whether copyright was the appropriate tool for striking the balance between economic incentivization and individual autonomy—and whether that was really the balance in question. READ MORE |
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CORNELL UNIVERSITY Algorithms and Decision-Making in the Public Sector By Karen Levy (DLI Affiliated Faculty, Cornell University); and Kyla Chasalow and Sarah Riley (Cornell University) This article explores the social implications of municipal algorithmic systems across a variety of stages, including problem formulation, technology acquisition, deployment, and evaluation. High-profile news about algorithms often stems from the private sector. Some stories are complimentary and optimistic, describing algorithms’ potential to transform society for the good; others are less generous, focusing on job displacement, threats to privacy and autonomy, or the role of algorithms in promoting misinformation and polarization on social media. These phenomena capture public attention and influence how people perceive algorithms, shaping policy, legislation, and research agendas. Public-sector algorithmic systems reside somewhat outside this spotlight, especially at the local level. These systems influence government functions ranging from the mundane (waste collection) to high-stakes (pretrial judicial decision-making). Yet despite their reach and impact, empirical work on the impact and efficacy of public-sector algorithmic systems remains nascent. READ MORE |
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2021 ACCOLADES DLI Director Garners Covey Award The International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP) has conferred our director, Helen Nissenbaum, with the 2021 Covey Award for her "field-defining contributions to computing, ethics, and philosophy." The IACAP promotes scholarly dialogue and research on all aspects of the computational and informational turn, and on the use of information and communication technologies in the service of philosophy. Helen presented the keynote during the IACAP's recent AGM. ABOUT IACAP |
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2021 ACCOLADES Computing Innovation Fellowship Awarded to DLI's Sunoo Park The Computing Research Association (CRA), the Computing Community Consortium (CCC), and the CI-Fellows Selection and Steering Committees has selected incoming DLI Postdoctoral Fellow, Sunoo Park, as a 2021 Computing Innovation Fellow. In May, the CRA and CCC launched the CI-Fellows program to provide a career-enhancing bridge experience for recent and soon-to-be computing PhD graduates to combat hiring disruptions due to COVID. READ MORE |
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DIGITAL LIFE SEMINAR Games as Social Transformation Mary Flanagan, Dartmouth College Scholar and game designer Mary Flanagan kicked-off the 2021 DLI Spring Seminar series by presenting an “under the hood” approach to using games to promote human flourishing, play by play. Can games make the world a better place? Can we reduce societal biases, or encourage people to intervene in situations of danger, such as sexual assault? And, how do we know the games are doing what they set out to do? WATCH FULL SEMINAR |
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DIGITAL LIFE SEMINAR The Unbearable Lightness of Teaching Responsible Data Science Julia Stoyanovich, New York University Despite the increasing number of ethical data science and AI courses available, pedagogical approaches rely on texts rather than algorithmic development or data analysis. Julia Stoyanovich discussed the triumphs and challenges of teaching responsible data science courses to students in higher education and members of the public in peer learning environments. WATCH FULL SEMINAR |
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DIGITAL LIFE SEMINAR DLI Debate: Does AI Pose an Existential Threat to Humanity? John Etchemendy, Stanford University, and Salomé Viljoen and Meg Young, DLI Postdocs DLI’s inaugural debate emerged from our weekly Reading Group, where Postdoctoral and Doctoral Fellows arranged an informal discussion around the provocation that AI posed an existential threat to humanity. The points raised during the discussion were so wide-ranging and compelling that we decided to run the debate formally during the Digital Life Seminar. WATCH FULL DEBATE |
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DIGITAL LIFE SEMINAR Thinking Backwards from Improvement in Information Technology Action Research Anthony Poon, DLI Doctoral Fellow In information technology for development and related fields, action-oriented researchers design and evaluate how technology can be used to improve the lives of underserved populations. Anthony Poon offered perspectives on improvement (including human development, empowerment, and post-development), and how they have inflected his research at Cornell Tech. WATCH FULL SEMINAR |
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DIGITAL LIFE SEMINAR Misinformation and the Conservative as Victim Ari Waldman, Northeastern University During Ari Waldman's engaging DLI Seminar, he argued that the law is deeply and structurally vulnerable to erosion by misinformation because standards and practices either insufficiently envisioned the possibility of lies or were explicitly created to achieve partisan and power gains with the support of misinformation. WATCH FULL DEBATE |
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DIGITAL LIFE SEMINAR Proof of Liabilities Yan Ji, DLI Doctoral Fellow In this DLI seminar, Yan Ji introduced us to cryptographic proof of liabilities (PoL) by expanding the state-of-the-art PoL scheme with extra privacy features, and making it applicable to domains outside finance, including transparent and private donations, new algorithms for disapproval voting and negative reviews, and publicly verifiable COVID-19 cases. WATCH FULL SEMINAR |
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DIGITAL LIFE SEMINAR From Civics to COVID: Dynamics of Misinformation Renée DiResta, Stanford Internet Observatory The Stanford Internet Observatory worked with a coalition of partners to rapidly detect high-velocity and potentially impactful false and misleading narratives related to voting. Renée DiResta shared some of the partnership's findings, discussing the rise of bottom-up misinformation, the dynamics of repeat spreaders, and the ways in which platform policies shape message propagation. WATCH FULL SEMINAR |
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DIGITAL LIFE SEMINAR Privacy Engineering through Obfuscation Ero Balsa, DLI Postdoctoral Fellow What can we learn from the plethora of methods and techniques that one may categorize as obfuscation? In this presentation, Ero Balsa provided an overview of the two main reasons why privacy engineers resort to obfuscation: to enable people to protect themselves against unnecessarily privacy-invasive systems, and to modulate the level of exposure that providing utility to untrusted parties requires. WATCH FULL SEMINAR |
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DIGITAL LIFE SEMINAR The Great Regulatory Dodge Salome Viljoen, Joint DLI & NYU Postdoc This talk featured some of Salome Viljoen's preliminary thoughts regarding how the current regulatory paradigm in privacy law enables digital technology companies to “dodge” privacy regulations with which other companies offering similar services must comply, and exploring how this “dodge” results in unfair rules for companies and undermines privacy protection for people. WATCH FULL SEMINAR |
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DIGITAL LIFE SEMINAR Personalized Recommender Systems: Technological Impact and Concerns Amy Zhang, DLI Doctoral Fellow Amy Zhang's seminar offered a high-level overview of common techniques for personalized recommender systems, and how they connect to problems on both the personal and social level. WATCH FULL SEMINAR |
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DIGITAL LIFE SEMINAR Frontiers of Medical AI: Therapeutics and Workflows Andre Esteva, Medical AI, Salesforce Research As the artificial intelligence and deep learning revolutions continue to impact a number of industries, medicine serves as an area for innovation and contestation. The maturation of key areas of AI – computer vision, natural language processing, etc. – have led to their successive adoption in certain application areas of medicine. In his seminar, Andre Esteva analyzed two vitally important areas – therapeutics and workflows. WATCH FULL SEMINAR |
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DIGITAL LIFE SEMINAR Data Ownership is Not Dispositive: Data Access Conflicts in Public-Private Contracting Relationships Meg Young, DLI Postdoctoral Fellow Closing our 2021 DLI Spring Series, Meg Young discussed data access and control in two public-private data sharing relationships: the contract between the transportation agencies behind the One Regional Card for All (ORCA) fare card in Seattle and their vendor Vix Inc.; and the would-be contract between King County Metro and Lyft Inc in support of a subsidized expansion of transit hub access. WATCH FULL SEMINAR |
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Fall 2021 Digital Life Seminar We'll keep you posted! DLI Media Channel Missed out on previous seminars? WATCH HERE Industry Affiliates Program Join our mission in shaping the future of digital societies by promoting ethical and political values, and quality of life for all. READ MORE |
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Critical Reflections Analytical Commentary and Research READ MORE More DLI Info Jessie Taft (jgt43@cornell.edu) Michael Byrne (mjb556@cornell.edu) DLI WEBSITE @dlicornelltech FOLLOW US ON TWITTER |
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