Cornell Tech | 2 West Loop Road, New York, NY 10044 SPRING 2024 |
|
|
Ethics, Policy, and Quality of Life in Digital Societies It's natural to be captivated, in both alarm and wonder, by the newest headlines about Gen AI and the searing questions it raises – security, privacy, truth, political freedom, fairness, harm, inequity, accountability, creativity, and more. These questions drive our research at DLI. Beyond headlines, however, our research is informed by a broader and deeper vision, seen against a backdrop of radical technologies of the past. The challenges we confront today are often born of prior decades’ challenges – neglected and unresolved. At DLI, we develop new wisdom for enduring problems while drawing on enduring wisdom for these new problems. We hope this Spring issue of Dispatch gives a flavor of the DLI community. – Helen Nissenbaum, DLI Director |
|
|
Hot off the Press | RECENT WORK |
|
|
ICA 2024 Expansive Study on Hyperlocal Surveillance Receives ICA Top Paper Award By DLI Researcher Madiha Z. Choksi, and Cornell Tech's M. Aubin Le Quéré, T. Lloyd, R. Tao, J. Grimmelmann, and M. Naaman. Uncovering tensions between neighborhood gentrification and community surveillance posts on Nextdoor––a hyperlocal social media platform for neighborhoods. The authors created a privacy-preserving pipeline to gather research data from public Nextdoor posts in Atlanta, and filtered these to a dataset of 1,537 community surveillance posts. READ MORE |
|
CORNELL UNIVERSITY | ARXIV Epistemic Power, Objectivity and Gender in AI Ethics Labor: Legitimizing Located Complaint By DLI Postdoc David Gray Widder What counts as legitimate AI ethics labor, and what are the epistemic terms on which AI ethics claims are rendered legitimate? AI ethics has delegitimized knowledge gained from personal experience or non-quantitative sources, which ought to be valued as it seeks to remedy harms wrought to marginalized people. Based on interviews with technologists, artists, and activists, this paper explores epistemic bases from which AI ethics is practiced. READ MORE |
|
|
CRITICAL REFLECTIONS Getting to Know Award-Winning DLI Researcher Madiha Zahrah Choksi Interview by Shana Creaney Can we get a brief introduction about yourself and what you’re studying? My name is Madiha Zahrah Choksi. I am a third year PhD student in Information Science. I work with Helen Nissenbaum and James Grimmelmann on topics related to information governance online, particularly how disparate groups online govern their information flows. So, I’ll look at issues of privacy or various kinds of governance issues that may arise for both platform based groups, like Reddit, Facebook, or Discord or the open community, developers on Github, for example, or Wikipedia users. READ MORE |
|
|
THE ECONOMIST Don’t Give AI Free Access to Work Denied to Humans, Argues Legal Scholar By DLI Postdoc Ben Sobel Lawsuits from rights-holders could reshape copyright law for the better. More than six years ago, Ben Sobel published an analysis arguing that training generative AI on copyrighted works could break American law. Since then many others have suggested the same.The issue has already boiled over in Britain, where this month talks between the ai industry and creative organizations over a new code of practice broke down. READ MORE |
|
ACM FAccT Visions of a Discipline: Analyzing Introductory AI Courses on YouTube By DLI Postdoc Severin Engelmann Online learning on social media platforms need to meaningfully address the ethical implications associated with AI. As AI becomes deeply integrated into our daily lives, educational institutions are directing their focus on resources that cater to AI education. Yet, informal education, including online learning on social media platforms like YouTube, plays an increasingly significant role for both students and the general public. READ MORE |
|
|
LEWIS & CLARK LAW REVIEW How Licenses Learn By DLI Reseacher Madiha Z. Choksi and DLI Affiliated Faculty James Grimmelmann Debates over license drafting and interpretation are a key mechanism of achieving consensus for successful collaboration. Open-source licenses are infrastructure that collaborative communities inhabit. These licenses don’t just define the legal terms under which members can use and build on the contributions of others. READ MORE |
|
CHI 2024 | DARK PATTERNS WORKSHOP Towards Quantifying Ethical User Experience: Evaluating User Perceptions of Dark Patterns in Social Media By DLI Doctoral Fellow Hauke Sandhaus and Doris Rhomberg (TU Wien Informatics) How is the ethicality of interface design reflected in current UX metrics and how could they be extended? This research explores how the ethicality of interface design is reflected in current UX metrics and how they could be extended. READ MORE |
|
|
Noteworthy | APPEARANCES IN THE MEDIA |
|
|
NEW YORK TIMES Can the W.N.B.A. Make Money? Featuring research by DLI Postdoc David Gray Widder “Even maximally open A.I. systems do not allow open access to the resources necessary to ‘democratize’ access to A.I., or enable full scrutiny,” argues David Gray Widder. READ MORE |
|
THE WHITE HOUSE 2024 Economic Report of the President Featuring research by DLI Postdoc Ben Sobel Ben Sobel's article, Artificial Intelligence's Fair Use Crisis, was cited on page 274 of the 2024 Economic Report of the President, published in late March 2024. READ MORE |
|
|
Out & About |NEWS FROM OUR ALUMS |
|
|
Creative Reflections | CULTURE & ARTS @ DLI |
|
|
CREATIVE REFLECTIONS DLI Presents Research at New York Public Library for the Performing Arts DLI Research Associate Michael Byrne, recipient of the prestigious 2023-2024 Fellowship from the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, shared his research findings at the culminating NYPL Dance Symposium at the Lincoln Center. Byrne collaborated with the Director of the Martha Graham School, Ashley Brown, and two students, Valentina Bache Rodriguez and Grace Xiaotong Yang, to explore intersecting themes of technology and history in relation to Martha Graham’s choreographic oeuvre. |
|
|
New Faces |WELCOMING THE LATEST DLI FACULTY AFFILIATES |
|
|
Mor Naaman Mor Naaman examines topics at the intersection of technology, media and democracy. His group applies multidisciplinary techniques to study our information ecosystem and its challenges. LEARN MORE |
|
Frank Pasquale Frank Pasquale is an expert on the law of artificial intelligence (AI), algorithms, and machine learning. His books include The Black Box Society, and New Laws of Robotics. LEARN MORE |
|
Yoav Artzi Yoav Artzi's research focuses on developing learning methods for natural language understanding and generation in automated interactive systems. LEARN MORE |
|
|
In Other News... | RELEVANT EVENTS & UPDATES |
|
|
UPCOMING EVENTS Call for Participation: Symposium on Applications of Contextual Integrity The 6th Annual Symposium on Applications of Contextual Integrity will be taking place at Rutgers University from September 27 - 28, 2024. The aim of the symposium is to foster interaction among diverse communities of research and practice, from academia, policy, and industry, interested in using contextual integrity as a way to reason about privacy, and to design and evaluate, craft regulation, and generate formal logics for privacy. LEARN MORE & APPLY |
|
|
PREVIOUS EVENTS DLI Researchers Participate in NYC Privacy Day at New York University DLI's Helen Nissenbaum, Severin Englemann, Ben Sobel, Margot Hanley, Benjamin Laufer, Madiha Zahra Choksi, Hauke Sandhaus and Yijing Zhang were excited to participate in the Spring '24 NYC Privacy Day, hosted by NYU's Center for Responsible AI. The DLI contingent presented their latest work and shared insights with other participants. As a founding member of the NYC consortium of research institutions, DLI shares in the aim to foster knowledge-sharing, research excellence, and cross-institutional, cross-disciplinary collaboration with a burgeoning privacy community in New York and beyond. The Fall '24 NYC Privacy Day takes place on October 25th. LEARN MORE |
|
|
Above: Faculty Affiliate Frank Pasquale sharing his research on Data Access & AI Explainability at the DLI Seminar. |
|
|
Digital Life Seminar For the latest list of speakers, visit our website! All guests outside of Cornell Tech are asked kindly to RSVP: mjb556@cornell.edu DLI Media Channel Want to catch-up on previous seminars? WATCH HERE Opportunities @ DLI Help us shape the future of digital societies by promoting ethics, politics & quality of life for all. READ MORE |
|
Critical Reflections Analytical Commentary and Research READ MORE Special Thanks The work we do is impossible without the dedication of DLI’s superb staff (Shana Creaney, Reina Miyake, and Michael Byrne), brilliance of our research community, wholehearted confidence of Cornell Tech's leadership, and the ongoing investment of our generous supporters. |
|
|
To stop receiving notifications about DLI, please email 'unsubscribe' to mjb556@cornell.edu |
|
|
|
|
