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CITP News, Events and Highlights
Platforms & Digital Infrastructure
Privacy & Security
Data Science, AI & Society
HIGHLIGHTS
CITP's Digital Witness Lab Aids in Probe of Indian Journalist's Murder
Forensic work conducted by CITP’s Digital Witness Lab helped investigative journalists at Forbidden Stories uncover the role a YouTube video played in the 2017 murder of Indian journalist Gauri Lankesh. Data Engineer Surya Mattu, who leads the Lab, said his team examined the role the video played in fueling animosity towards Lankesh. Read more about the Lab’s work in Mattu's post.
Professor Arvind Narayanan’s Work Exposing Bad AI Featured in Magazine
Quanta Magazine, a math and science publication, has proYled computer science professor Arvind Narayanan and his work exposing privacy violations by tech companies. Its coverage includes a Q&A, photos of Narayanan around the Princeton University campus, and a video in which he discusses the ethics of government agencies and other organizations relying on faulty and inaccurate artiYcial intelligence (AI) technologies to make decisions about people’s lives — including jail time, bank loans and
insurance coverage. His comments are based on the recently released paper, Against Predictive Optimization: On the Legitimacy of Decision-Making Algorithms that Optimize Predictive Accuracy, co-authored by CITP-acliated researchers Angelina Wang, Sayash Kapoor, Solon Barocas and Narayanan. It outlines multiple eaws in many machine learning systems that nonproYt, medical, legal and other entities often rely on to make predictions and judgments about their clients’ behaviors. Read Narayanan’s full interview with Quanta and watch the video on Youtube
RESEARCH & POLICY NOTES
The Switch, the Ladder, and the Matrix: Models for Classifying AI Systems, a paper co-authored by CITP Fellow Jakob P. Mökander, was published in January. It identiYes and evaluates three conceptually distinct approaches to classifying AI systems.
Upvotes? Downvotes? No Votes? Understanding the relationship between reaction mechanisms and political discourse on Reddit, a paper co-authored by CITP researchers Orestis Papakyriakopoulos and Amy Winecoff, was accepted at the 2023 ACM CHI Conference in April.
Automating Automaticity: How the Context of Human Choice Affects the Extent of Algorithmic Bias, a paper co-authored by Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellow Diag Davenport that was the topic of his recent CITP talk, was published in February.
TECH TALKS
CITP graduate student Mona Wang in February gave a talk on Self-Censorship Under Law: A Case Study of The Hong Kong National Security Law at the Free and Open Communications on the Internet workshop. The paper, coauthored with CITP faculty member Jonathan Mayer, explores self-censorship online in Hong Kong after the law took effect.
CITP data scientist Amy Winecoff discussed her research on the perceptions of AI startup entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and blockchain professionals at the Austin Forum on Technology & Society’s Digital Identity, Privacy, and Trust Meetup in February.
CITP Emerging Scholar Christelle Tessono in February spoke on the panel How to Regulate the Internet at the University of British Columbia, on the state of digital policy in Canada, and that nation’s work in developing AI regulation. In addition, her paper AI Oversight, Accountability and Protecting Human Rights was cited during a parliamentary debate on Canada’s Digital Charter Implementation Act.
BOOKS & BYLINES
CITP researcher Anunay Kulshrestha co-authored The Indian Telecommunication Bill Engenders Security and Privacy Risks, an article in Lawfare about India’s proposed legislation on government surveillance.
From CITP’s Freedom to Tinker Blog
Computer science professor Andrew Appel, a member of CITP’s executive committee, authored the post Unrecoverable Election Screwup in Williamson County TX.
Sociology professor Matthew Salganik, also a member of CITP's executive committee, authored the post Can ChatGPT—and its successors—go from cool to tool?
An essay by Professor Arvind Narayanan’s, Understanding Social Media Recommendation Algorithms, was published by the Knight 1st Amendment Institute at Columbia University.
MEDIA MENTIONS
Princeton Provost Jennifer Rexford, a CITP associated faculty member, is featured in Q&A: New Provost Jennifer Rexford ’91 Rexford discusses diversity, student mental health, and why computer science is the most popular major, Princeton Alumni Weekly.
CITP-acliated researcher Kevin Lee was quoted in Top-rated password managers to protect your accounts, NBC News Select.
CITP professor Arvind Narayanan and graduate student Sayash Kapoor and/or their work have been cited in several articles, including the following:
Meta’s powerful AI language model has leaked online — what happens now? and OpenAI announces GPT-4 — the next generation of its AI language model, both in The Verge
The LLaMA is out of the bag. Should we expect a tidal wave of disinformation?, Knight First Amendment Institute, Columbia University Wrap Your Brain Around This. ArtiYcial intelligence is changing higher education. Will it be for the best?, Princeton Alumni Weekly
‘Digital inequalities will power digital colonialism’: Arvind Narayanan, Frontline Kapoor was also interviewed The AI in the newsroom, MIT Technology podcast, In Machines We Trust
Narayanan was cited or interviewed in the following outlets:
Artists are alarmed by AI — and they’re Yghting back, The Washington Post How Microsoft's experiment in artiYcial intelligence tech backYred, NPR Is Bing too belligerent? Microsoft looks to tame AI chatbot, Associated Press Microsoft’s AI chatbot is going off the rails, The Washington Post
Snapchat’s AI could be the creepiest chatbot yet, Fast Company
Walker: Calm down over ChatGPT, The Detroit News
Stop using your phone number to log in, a Vox article that cites Security and Privacy Risks of Number Recycling at Mobile Carriers in the United States, a paper that CITP-acliated researcher Kevin Lee and Narayanan presented in 2021 at APWG Symposium on Electronic Crime Research
What are the ethical hazards in the effort to commercialize AI?, MarketPlace African American Studies professor Ruha Benjamin, a CITP associated faculty member, was featured in Building an Ustopia: A Conversation on Tech & Equity with Dr. Ruha Benjamin, OpenText blog.
CALENDAR ITEMS
Tues., March 21: CITP Seminar: Jordan Brensinger – The Social Production of “Accurate” Personal Financial Data, 12:30 p.m., 306 Sherrerd Hall
Tues., March 28: CITP Seminar: Jakob Mökander – Auditing Large Language Models, 12:30 p.m., 306 Sherrerd Hall
Thurs., March 30: CITP Distinguished Lecture Series: Lorrie Cranor – Designing Usable and Useful Privacy Choice Interfaces, 4:30-6 p.m., Computer Science Building, Room 105
Tues., April 4: CITP Seminar: Brooke Welles – #HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice, 12:30 p.m., 306 Sherrerd Hall
Tues., April 11: CITP Lecture: Amanda Coston – Responsible Machine Learning through the Lens of Causal Inference, 12:30 p.m., 105 Computer Science
April 28-29: Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and CITP professor Arvind Narayanan present the Knight Institute Symposium on “Algorithmic AmpliYcation.” Speakers include CITP graduate student Benjamin Kaiser and CITP faculty member Jonathan Mayer, an assistant professor of computer science and public affairs.
KUDOS
The CITP community welcomed founder Ed Felten back to the Princeton University campus on March 8 as a speaker for the 2023 Distinguished Lecture Series Following his talk, Scaling Arbitrum, from Lab to Product, friends and former colleagues gathered at a special reception to celebrate his contributions to CITP and Princeton. Felten — the Robert E. Kahn Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs Emeritus — retired in 2021. He is currently co-founder and chief scientist at Offchain Labs.
Pixel Hunt, an investigative story that relied on crowd-sourcing tools developed by
Mozilla Rally, a project led by CITP researchers Jonathan Mayer and Rebecca Weiss, has won awards from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing and the Association for Health Care Journalists. CITP data engineer and journalist Surya Mattu designed and led the project while working at The Markup.
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The Center for Information Technology Policy is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, interdisciplinary hub where researchers study the impact of digital technologies on society with the mission of informing policymakers, journalists, academics, other researchers, and the public for the good of society. CITP's programming includes a Technology and Society undergraduate certificate, a Tech Policy Clinic, a Public Interest Technology Summer Fellowship, and an Emerging Scholars in Technology program.
CITP is an initiative of Princeton University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) and the School of Public and International Afairs (SPIA)
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