Dr. David Relman, infectious diseases expert and microbiologist at Stanford Medicine, discusses the Oxford vaccine candidate and just how deadly COVID-19 can be.
PhD students awarded Arvind Krishnamurthy, the John S. Osterweis Professor of Finance, the PhD Faculty Distinguished Service Award during a virtual ceremony.
Professor of economics Ran Abramitzky has been named the new senior associate dean of the social sciences in the School of Humanities and Sciences. He will begin his term on September 1, 2020.
The European Union has passed a stimulus plan of more than $850 billion dollars to bring its economy back on track after the coronavirus pandemic ushered in staggering unemployment rates.
The plan highlights unprecedented actions to bring financial stability to those within the EU that have been most affected.
For more, KCBS Radio was joined by Christophe Crombez, Political Economist and Senior Research Scholar at Stanford University.
Please join the Cyber Policy Center for Exploring Potential “Solutions” to Online Disinformation, hosted by Cyber Policy Center's Kelly Born, with guests Adam Berinsky, Mitsui Professor of Political Science at MIT and Director of the MIT Political Experiments Research Lab (PERL) at MIT, David Rand, Erwin H. Schell Professor and an Associate Professor of Management Science and Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and Director of the Human Cooperation Laboratory and the Applied Cooperation Team at MIT, and Avi Tuschman, Founder & CIO, Pinpoint Predictive. The session is open but registraton is required.
Adam Berinsky is the Mitsui Professor of Political Science at MIT and serves as the director of the MIT Political Experiments Research Lab (PERL). He is also a Faculty Affiliate at the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS). Berinsky received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 2000. He is the author of "In Time of War: Understanding American Public Opinion from World War II to Iraq" (University of Chicago Press, 2009). He is also the author of "Silent Voices: Public Opinion and Political Participation in America" (Princeton University Press, 2004) and has published articles in many journals. He is currently the co-editor of the Chicago Studies in American Politics book series at the University of Chicago Press. He is also the recipient of multiple grants from the National Science Foundation and was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.
David Rand is the Erwin H. Schell Professor and an Associate Professor of Management Science and Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT Sloan, and the Director of the Human Cooperation Laboratory and the Applied Cooperation Team. Bridging the fields of behavioral economics and psychology, David’s research combines mathematical/computational models with human behavioral experiments and online/field studies to understand human behavior. His work uses a cognitive science perspective grounded in the tension between more intuitive versus deliberative modes of decision-making, and explores topics such as cooperation/prosociality, punishment/condemnation, perceived accuracy of false or misleading news stories, political preferences, and the dynamics of social media platform behavior.
Avi Tuschman is a Stanford StartX entrepreneur and founder of Pinpoint Predictive, where he currently serves as Chief Innovation Officer and Board Director. He’s spent the past five years developing the first Psychometric AI-powered data-enrichment platform, which ranks 260 million individuals for performance marketing and risk management applications. Tuschman is an expert on the science of heritable psychometric traits. His book and research on human political orientation have been covered in peer-reviewed and mainstream media from 25 countries. Previous to his career in tech, he advised current and former heads of state as well as multilateral development banks in the Western Hemisphere. Tuschman completed his undergraduate and doctoral degrees in evolutionary anthropology at Stanford.
Anat R. Admati is the George G.C. Parker Professor of Finance and Economics at Stanford University Graduate School of Business (GSB), a Faculty Director of the GSB Corporations and Society Initiative, and a senior fellow at Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. She has written extensively on information dissemination in financial markets, portfolio management, financial contracting, corporate governance and banking. Admati’s current research, teaching and advocacy focus on the complex interactions between business, law, and policy with focus on governance and accountability.
Since 2010, Admati has been active in the policy debate on financial regulations. She is the co-author, with Martin Hellwig, of the award-winning and highly acclaimed book The Bankers’ New Clothes: What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It (Princeton University Press, 2013; bankersnewclothes.com). In 2014, she was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world and by Foreign Policy Magazine as among 100 global thinkers.
Admati holds BSc from the Hebrew University, MA, MPhil and PhD from Yale University, and an honorary doctorate from University of Zurich. She is a fellow of the Econometric Society, the recipient of multiple fellowships, research grants, and paper recognition, and is a past board member of the American Finance Association. She has served on a number of editorial boards and is a member of the FDIC’s Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee, a former member of the CFTC’s Market Risk Advisory Committee, and a former visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund.
The European Union is often called a ‘super-regulator’, especially when it comes to data-protection and privacy rules. Having seen European lawmaking from close by, in all its complexities, I have often considered this qualification an exaggerated one. Yes, the European Union frequently takes the first steps in ensuring principles continue to be protected, even as digitization disrupts. However, the speed with which technology evolves versus the pace of democratic lawmaking leads to perpetual mismatches.
Even the famous, or infamous, General Data Protection Regulation does not meet many essential regulatory needs of the moment. The mainstreaming of Artificial Intelligence in particular, poses new challenges to concepts of the protection of rights and the sustaining of the rule of law. In its White Paper on Artificial Intelligence, as well the Data Strategy, the European Commission references to the common good and the public interest, as well as societal needs as opposed to an emphasis on regulating the digital market. These are welcome steps in acknowledging the depth and scope of technological impact and defining harms not just in economic terms. It remains to be seen how the visions articulated in the White Paper and the Strategy, will translate into concrete legislation.
One proposal to make concrete improvements to legal frameworks, is outlined by Martin Tisné in The Data Delusion. He highlights the need to update legal privacy standards to be more reflective of the harms incurred through collective data analysis, as opposed to individual privacy violations. Martin makes a clear case for addressing the discrepancy between the profit models benefitting from grouped data versus the ability of any individual to prove the harms caused to his or her rights.
The lack of transparency into the inner workings of algorithmic processing of data further hinders the path to much needed accountability of the powerful technology businesses operating growing parts of our information architecture and the data flows they process.
While EU takes the lead in setting values-based standards and rules for the digital layer of our societies and economies, a lot of work remains to be done.
Marietje Schaake: Martin, in your paper you address the gap between the benefits for technology companies through collective data processing, and the harms for society. You point to historic reasons for individual privacy protections in European laws. Do you consider the European Union to be the best positioned to address the legal shortcomings, especially as you point out that some opportunities to do so were missed in the GDPR?
Martin Tisné: Europe is well positioned but perhaps not for the reasons we traditionally think of (strong privacy tradition, empowered regulators). Individual privacy alone is a necessary, but not sufficient foundation stone to build the future of AI regulation. And whilst much is made of European regulators, the GDPR has been hobbled by the lack of funding and capacity of data protection commissioners across Europe. What Europe does have though, is a legal, political and societal tradition of thinking about the public interest, the common good and how this is balanced against individual interests. This is where we should innovate, taking inspiration from environmental legislation such as the Urgenda Climate Case against the Dutch Government which established that the government had a legal duty to prevent dangerous climate change, in the name of the public interest.
And Europe also has a lot to learn from other political and legal cultures. Part of the future of data regulation may come the indigenous data rights movement, with greater emphasis on the societal and group impacts of data, or from the concept of Ubuntu ethics that assigns community and personhood to all people.
Schaake: What scenario do you foresee in 10 years if collective harms are not dealt with in updates of laws?
Tisné: I worry we will see two impacts. The first is a continuation of what we are seeing now: negative impacts of digital technologies on discrimination, voting rights, privacy, consumers. As people become increasingly aware of the problem there will be a corresponding increase in legal challenges. We’re seeing this already for example with the Lloyd class action case against Google for collecting iPhone data. But I worry these will fail to stick and have lasting impact because of the obligation to have these cases turn on one person, or a class of people’s, individual experiences. It is very hard for individuals to seek remedy for collective harms, as opposed to personal privacy invasions. So unless we solve the issue I raise in the paper – the collective impact of AI and automation – these will continue to fuel polarization, discrimination on the basis of age, gender (and many other aspects of our lives) and the further strengthening of populist regimes.
I also worry about the ways in which algorithms will optimize on the basis of seemingly random classifications (e.g. “people who wear blue shirts, get up early on Saturday mornings, and were geo-located in a particular area of town at a particular time”). These may be proxies for protected characteristics (age, gender reassignment, disability, race, religion, sex, marriage, pregnancy/maternity, sexual orientation) and provide grounds for redress. They may also not be and sow the seeds of future discrimination and harms. Authoritarian rulers are likely to take advantage of the seeming invisibility of those data-driven harms to further silence their opponents. How can I protect myself if I don’t know the basis on which I am being discriminated against or targeted?
Schaake: How do you reflect on the difference in speed between technological innovations and democratic lawmaking? Some people imply this will give authoritarian regimes an advantage in setting global standards and rules. What are your thoughts on ensuring democratic governments speed up?
Tisné: Democracies cannot afford to be outpaced by technological innovation and constantly be fighting yesterday’s wars. Our laws have not changed to reflect changes in technology, which extracts value from collective data, and need to catch up. A lot of the problems stem from the fact that in government (as in companies), the people responsible for enforcement are separated from those with the technical understanding. The solution lies in much better translation between technology, policy and the needs of the public.
An innovation and accountability-led government must involve and empower the public in co-creating policies, above and beyond the existing rules that engage individuals (consent forms etc.). In the paper I propose a Public Interest Data Bill that addresses this need: the rules of the digital highway used as a negotiation between the public and regulators, between private data consumers and data generators. Specifically: clear transparency, public participation and realistic sanctions when things go wrong.
This is where democracies should hone their advantage over authoritarian regimes – using such an approach as the basis for setting global standards and best practices (e.g. affected communities providing input into algorithmic impact assessments).
Schaake: The protection of privacy is what sets democratic societies apart from authoritarian ones. How likely is it that we will see an effort between democracies to set legal standards across borders together? Can we overcome the political tensions across the Atlantic, and strengthen democratic alliances globally?
Tisné: I remain a big supporter of international cooperation. I helped found the Open Government Partnership ten years ago, which remains the main forum for 79 countries to develop innovative open government reforms jointly with the public. Its basic principles hold true: involve global south and global north countries with equal representation, bring civil society in jointly with government from the outset, seek out and empower reformers within government (they exist, regardless of who is in power in the given year), and go local to identify exciting innovations.
If we heed those principles we can set legal standards by learning from open data and civic technology reforms in Taiwan, experiments with data trusts in India, legislation to hold algorithms accountable in France; and by identifying and working with the individuals driving those innovations, reformers such as Audrey Tang in Taiwan, Katarzyna Szymielewicz in Poland, and Henri Verdier in France.
These reformers need a home, a base to influence policymakers and technologists, to get those people responsible for enforcement working with those with the technical understanding. The Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence may be that home but these are early days, it needs to be agile enough to work with the private sector, civil society as well as governments and the international system. I remain hopeful.
Protecting Individual Isn't Enough When the Harm is Collective. A Q&A with Marietje Schaake and Martin Tisne on his new paper The Data Delusion.
The Data Delusion: Protecting Individual Data Isn't Enough When The Harm is Collective
Author: Martin Tisné, Managing Director, Luminate
Editor: Marietje Schaake, International Policy Director, Cyber Policy Center
The threat of digital discrimination
On March 17, 2018, questions about data privacy exploded with the scandal of the previously unknown consulting company Cambridge Analytica. Lawmakers are still grappling with updating laws to counter the harms of big data and AI.
In the Spring of 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic brought questions about sufficient legal protections back to the public debate, with urgent warnings about the privacy implications of contact tracing apps. But the surveillance consequences of the pandemic’s aftermath are much bigger than any app: transport, education, health systems and offices are being turned into vast surveillance networks. If we only consider individual trade-offs between privacy sacrifices and alleged health benefits, we will miss the point. The collective nature of big data means people are more impacted by other people’s data than by data about them. Like climate change, the threat is societal and personal.
In the era of big data and AI, people can suffer because of how the sum of individual data is analysed and sorted into groups by algorithms. Novel forms of collective data-driven harms are appearing as a result: online housing, job and credit ads discriminating on the basis of race and gender, women disqualified from jobs on the basis of gender and foreign actors targeting light-right groups, pulling them to the far-right. Our public debate, governments, and laws are ill-equipped to deal with these collective, as opposed to individual, harms.
Join host Marietje Schaake, International Policy Director at the Cyber Policy Center, as she brings together experts from the space, to speak about what can be done to encourage platforms like Facebook to stop the spread of hate and disinformation.
The event is open to the public, but registration is required:
Maritje Schaake: Marietje Schaake is the international policy director at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center and international policy fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. She was named President of the Cyber Peace Institute. Between 2009 and 2019, Marietje served as a Member of European Parliament for the Dutch liberal democratic party where she focused on trade, foreign affairs and technology policies. Marietje is affiliated with a number of non-profits including the European Council on Foreign Relations and the Observer Research Foundation in India and writes a monthly column for the Financial Times and a bi-monthly column for the Dutch NRC newspaper.
Jessica Gonzalez: An accomplished attorney and racial-justice advocate, Jessica works closely with the executive team and key stakeholders to develop and execute strategies to advance Free Press’ mission. A former Lifeline recipient, Jessica has helped fend off grave Trump administration cuts to the program, which helps provide phone-and-internet access for low-income people. She was part of the legal team that overturned a Trump FCC decision blessing runaway media consolidation. She also co-founded Change the Terms, a coalition of more than 50 civil- and digital-rights groups that works to disrupt online hate. Previously, Jessica was the executive vice president and general counsel at the National Hispanic Media Coalition, where she led the policy shop and helped coordinate campaigns against racist and xenophobic media programming. Prior to that she was a staff attorney and teaching fellow at Georgetown Law’s Institute for Public Representation. Jessica has testified before Congress on multiple occasions, including during a Net Neutrality hearing in the House while suffering from acute morning sickness, and during a Senate hearing while eight months pregnant to advocate for affordable internet access.
David Sifry: As Vice President of the Center for Technology and Society (CTS), Dave Sifry leads a team of innovative technologists, researchers, and policy experts developing proactive solutions and producing cutting-edge research to protect vulnerable populations. In its efforts to advocate change at all levels of society, CTS serves as a vital resource to legislators, journalists, universities, community organizations, tech platforms and anyone who has been a target of online hate and harassment. Dave joined ADL in 2019 after a storied career as a technology entrepreneur and executive. He founded six companies including Linuxcare and Technorati, and served in executive roles at companies including Lyft and Reddit. In addition to his entrepreneurial work, Dave was selected as a Technology Pioneer at The World Economic Forum, and is an advisor and mentor for a select group of companies and startup founders. As the son of a hidden child of the Holocaust, the core values and mission exemplified by ADL were instilled in him at an early age.
The introduction to this symposium provides a working definition of populist parties and movements and then examines the rise in their support in Europe and the implications of populist rule. As does the symposium as a whole, it highlights the diversity of populisms, identifies the crisis of representation as a root cause of the populist rise, and examines the consequences of populist rule for formal institutions, informal norms of democracy, and representation itself.