Two Ph.D. Research Presentations

Two I School Ph.D. students present their dissertation research:

Toward Global AI Ethics: Participation, Expertise, and Human Values in Rural Togo

Zoe Kahn

Technology ethics has long established that well-intended technologies can harm individuals, communities, and the environment. That said, most of the research uncovering harms and constructing solutions has come out of the United States and Europe and, as a result, tends to center a relatively narrow set of western values such as fairness, accountability, transparency, and privacy, despite broad agreement that norms and values differ across time, place, and culture. With global uptake, if technology ethics does not extend to include a wider set of values, well-intended sociotechnical systems will continue to cause widespread harm.

In this talk, Zoe Kahn will present findings from qualitative research in rural Togo about the use of big data and algorithms to inform economic development, beginning to broaden understandings of well-studied values (e.g., data privacy) and turn attention toward new values (e.g., social cohesion). Specifically, Kahn draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with 124 people living in rural villages in Togo shortly after the government of Togo implemented an entirely digital cash transfer program: the first to use algorithms trained on mobile phone data to determine program eligibility. In her data collection and analyses, Kahn takes an interdisciplinary, inductive approach that integrates the perspectives of people with domain expertise (e.g., data scientists, policymakers) alongside experiential experts (e.g., people with lived expertise) to inform the design of more just, equitable, and effective sociotechnical systems.

This work makes four contributions: (1) broadens the literature on technology ethics to include new perspectives from individuals living in rural Togo; (2) demonstrates the importance of holistic accounts of data privacy that integrate perspectives of both domain and experiential experts; (3) provides technical design and policy recommendations to minimize data privacy risks and strengthen social cohesion; and (4) develops new methods that leverage visuals and storytelling to bridge experiential and domain experts, and in so doing, enable meaningful participation in sociotechnical system design and drive forward real-world impact.

Climate Change and Migration

Suraj Nair

While climate change is widely expected to reshape patterns of global human migration in the 21st century, we know little about the precise nature of these effects. For instance, we know little about when and where climate change might induce cross-border movement, and what the magnitudes of these displacements might be. Improving our understanding of such questions of critical importance, as governments and policymakers try to mitigate and adapt to a changing climate while designing effective policies that protect vulnerable populations.

In this talk, Suraj will present findings from his dissertation research which combines computational methods and econometric analysis to examine these questions. His research provides new quantitative evidence which characterizes the heterogeneous and highly disparate nature of the impacts of climate change across the world. Contrary to popular notions, his findings suggest that climate change might not have much of an impact on cross-border migration; rather, his findings suggest that there may be large increases in internal migration in many parts of the world, while the poorest populations may be “trapped” or unable to migrate at all. Suraj’s talk will also demonstrate how novel sources of digital data — derived from phone records and social media usage — can be leveraged to measure aggregate human migration across various spatial and temporal scales, filling critical data gaps. 

This event will be live streamed on Zoom. You are welcome to join us either in South Hall or via Zoom. If this is your first time using Zoom, please allow a few extra minutes to download and install the browser plugin or mobile app.

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