Tech Challenges to Truth in the Age of AI and Algorithms
Paul Dourish is Chancellor’s Professor and the Steckler Endowed Chair in Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine, where he serves as director of the Steckler Center for Responsible, Ethical, and Accessible Technology. He has appointments in Informatics and Anthropology, and is an Honorary Professorial Fellow in Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses primarily on understanding information technology as a site of social and cultural production; his work combines topics in human-computer interaction, social informatics, and science and technology studies. He is the author of several books, most recently “The Stuff of Bits: An Essay on the Materialities of Information” (MIT Press, 2017). He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the British Computer Society (BCS), and a member of the SIGCHI Academy. He has been awarded the AMIA Diana Forsythe Prize and has twice received the ACM CSCW conference’s Lasting Impact Award.
Olufunmilayo Arewa is a law professor at George Mason University. Her research focuses on technology, the creative industries, business law, accounting, entrepreneurship, comparative law, and Africana studies. Prior to becoming a law professor, she practiced law in the technology startup arena in Silicon Valley, New York, and Boston. In 2015, she received a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Faculty Visit Research Grant at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin for a research project entitled Cultural, Legal, and Business Considerations in the Diffusion of Jazz in Germany, a project connected to her forthcoming book Curating Black Culture: Music, Ownership, and Commodification, which examines business, legal, and cultural contexts of the global spread of African American influenced musical forms. Her 2021 book, Disrupting Africa: Technology, Law & Development (Cambridge University Press), won the ISA 2022 STAIR Book Award, given annually for the best book that develops interdisciplinary perspectives on how science, technology and art permeate international politics.
Sheera Frenkel is a New York Times reporter who writes about social media companies, She is interested in the dynamics within these companies, and how their executives make decisions that can impact the lives of billions of people across the world. Frenkel also cover the ways in which social media can shift national conversations and change narratives. That includes misinformation, hate speech and conspiracies, as well as trends and viral campaigns.Sheera has covered technology for almost a decade, ranging from the first documented cases of cyberwarfare in the Middle East, to the social media manipulations that are rampant in today’s internet landscape.
In 2021, Frenkel wrote “An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination” with her Times colleague, Cecilia Kang. The book, a New York Times and International best seller, was based on reporting she did for The Times on how the tech giant failed to protect people’s data as well as understand the manipulations happening on its platform. In 2022 Frenkel won a Mirror Award for reporting on misinformation.
Lucy Hornby is a Senior Associate and Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Her research focuses on the revival of the Chinese state and the rise of Xi Jinping during the reform era. She lived in China for almost 20 years, working as a journalist for Reuters and the Financial Times, before returning to the United States as a 2020 fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. She first moved to China in 1995, teaching English in Wuhan thanks to Princeton in Asia, a program that builds bridges between the United States and Asia. She has also reported on Asian energy markets and investment for Dow Jones Newswires and on Latin American energy investment for Energy Intelligence. A fluent Mandarin speaker, Lucy has reported from every Chinese province and region, on topics ranging from elite politics to the trade war and environmental pollution. Her coverage was honored with the 2018 Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) award for excellence in business reporting, among other awards, for investigations into the ownership and financing of some of China’s largest and most opaque conglomerates. She was previously a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.
Elizabeth Loftus is Distinguished Professor at the University of California – Irvine. She holds faculty positions in the Department of Psychological Science; the Department of Criminology, Law & Society; and the School of Law. She has published over 20 books and over 600 scientific articles. Loftus’s research has focused on the malleability of human memory. This extensive body of research has shown us how, why and when our memories can be changed by new experiences that we have after some key information is stored in memory. Those new experiences can contaminate memory, leading to transformations, alterations, distortions of what was previously experienced.
Loftus’s memory research has led to her being called as an expert witness or consultant in hundreds of cases. Some of the more well-known cases include the McMartin PreSchool Molestation case, the Hillside Strangler, the Abscam cases, the trial of the officers accused in the Rodney King beating, the Menendez brothers, the Bosnian War trials in the Hague, the Oklahoma Bombing case, and litigation involving Michael Jackson, Martha Stewart, Scooter Libby, Oliver North, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, and the Duke University Lacrosse players.