Nathan Mathias (Cornell), Governing Human and Machine Behavior
View Series Detail & Upcoming Registration
The Just Infrastructures Speaker Series was created by researchers in the Computer Science Department, the School of Information Sciences and the College of Media at the University of Illinois to interrogate the complex interactions between people, algorithms, and AI-driven systems.
Who: Nathan Matias, Director and Founder of the Citizens and Technology Lab, Cornell University
Title: Governing Human and Machine Behavior
When: March 10, 12-1 CST
Where: On Zoom via registration at this link: https://just-infras.illinois.edu
Abstract:
The governance of real-time decision-making algorithms is one of society’s most pressing scientific challenges. In public discourse, these algorithms decide what we are allowed to say and rank the information we see. Because they adapt to human behaviors that they also influence, their actions have been hard to predict— representing a risk to society and a challenge for anyone who would govern their behavior.
What kinds of knowledge can help us observe and govern these feedback loops between human and machine behavior? And how might we need to re-make research methods to work for democracies and not just corporations? In this talk, you will hear about a series of studies to understand the impact of content moderation algorithms on freedom of expression and reduce the spread of misinformation by recommender systems. You will also hear about the role of citizen science in digital governance and how to design systems for industry-independent research.
Bio:
Dr. J. Nathan Matias (@natematias) organizes citizen behavioral science for a safer, fairer, more understanding internet. A Guatemalan-American, Nathan is an assistant professor in the Cornell University Department of Communication. Nathan is founder of the Citizens and Technology Lab (formerly CivilServant), a public-interest research group at Cornell that organizes citizen behavioral science and behavioral consumer protection research for digital life. CAT Lab has worked with communities of tens of millions of people on reddit, Wikipedia, and Twitter to test ideas for preventing harassment, broadening gender diversity on social media, responding to human/algorithmic misinformation, managing political conflict, and auditing social technologies. Nathan is also pioneering industry-independent evaluations on the impact of tech platform policies in society.
Nathan’s work is regularly covered by international media, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, NPR All Things Considered, WIRED, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Boston Globe, Canadian Broadcasting Company, FastCompany, Fortune, Chronicle of Higher Education, Nieman Journalism Review, and the Columbia Journalism Review, to name a few.
Best,
Anita + Just Infrastructures
