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Exhibit X: The Courts Aug 16, 2024

Show notes

Imagine: something horrible has happened and the only evidence you have is a video posted online. Can you submit it into evidence in court? Well, it’s complicated.

In part 4 of our Exhibit X series, Alix sat down with Dr. Alexa Koenig to discuss her work with the International Criminal Court. Dr. Koenig and many colleagues are supporting the court to grapple with online evidence and tackling challenges that courts face when they adapt to our digital world.

We answer questions like:

How does the ICC work with social media companies to acquire evidence?
How has generative AI and synthetic media impacted evidence in courts?
When can we expect to see social scientists as expert witnesses in court?

Alexa Koenig, PhD, JD, is Co-Faculty Director of the Human Rights Center , Director of HRC’s Investigations Program, and an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, where she teaches classes that focus on the intersection of emerging technologies and human rights. She also co-teaches a class on open source investigative reporting at Berkeley Journalism. Alexa co-founded the Human Rights Center Investigations Lab, which trains students and professionals to use social media and other digital open source content to strengthen human rights research, reporting, and accountability.

Exhibit X: The Litigators Aug 09, 2024

Show notes

Often it feels as though the cases and lawsuits brought against big tech firms are continuously piling up, but there never seems to be any resulting justice or resolution. There are many good reasons for this, two of which are section 230 and the first amendment.

Big Tech companies will routinely invoke 230 and the first amendment to get cases against them thrown out before they can go to trial. In part 3 of Exhibit X, Meetali Jain explains how litigators have been playing 4D chess to get the courts to hold these companies accountable.

In this episode we ask…

What is section 230 and how to platforms use it to their benefit?
How can we take the design decisions of a corporation out of the free speech bucket so that they can be held responsible for their actions?
How can we start developing more levers from transparency, beyond lawsuits and whistleblowing?

Meetali Jain is a human rights lawyer, who founded the Tech Justice Law Project in 2023. The Project works with a collective of legal experts, policy advocates, digital rights organizations, and technologists to ensure that legal and policy frameworks are fit for the digital age, and that online spaces are safer and more accountable.

This episode was hosted by Alix Dunn and Prathm Juneja

Exhibit X: The Whistleblower Aug 02, 2024

Show notes

In part 2 of Exhibit X, Alix interviewed Frances Haugen, who In 2021 blew the whistle on Meta; they were sitting on the knowledge that their products were harmful to kids, and yet — shocker — they continued to make design decisions that would keep kids engaged.

Mark Zuckerberg worked hard on his image (it’s a hydrofoil, not a surfboard!), while Instagram was being used for human trafficking — the lack of care and accountability here absolutely melts the mind.

What conversations did Frances’s whistleblowing start?

Was whistleblowing an effective mechanism for accountability in this case?

Do we have to add age verification to social media sites or break end-to-end encryption to keep children safe online?

*Frances Haugen is a data scientist & engineer. In 2021 she disclosed 22,000 internal documents to The Wall Street Journal and the Securities & Exchanges Commission which demonstrated Meta’s knowledge of their products harms.*

Your hosts this week are Alix Dunn and Prathm Juneja

Exhibit X: Tech and Tobacco Jul 26, 2024

Show notes

Here is something you’re probably tired of hearing: Big Tech is responsible for a bottomless brunch of societal harms. And they are not being held accountable. Right now it feels as though we hear constantly about laws, regulation, courts. But none of it is effective in litigating against Big Tech.

In our latest podcast series Exhibit X, we’re looking at how the tides might finally be turning. Legal accountability could be around the corner, but only if a few things happen first.

To start, we look back to 1964. When Big Tobacco was winning the ‘try your best to profit from harm’ race. Research showed cigarettes were addictive and also caused cancer — and yet the industry evaded accountability for decades.

In this episode we ask questions like:

Why wasn’t a report in 1964 showing cigarettes are addictive and cause cancer enough to transform the industry?
What can we learn about corporate capture of research on tobacco?
How did academia and experts shape the outcomes of court cases?

Prathm Juneja was Alix’s co-host for this episode. He is a PhD Candidate in Social Data Science at the Oxford Internet Institute Working at the intersection of academia, industry, and government on technology, innovation, and policy.

Further Reading

What the FAccT? First law, bad law Jul 05, 2024

Show notes

In this episode, we speak with Lara Groves and Jacob Metcalf at the seventh annual FAccT conference in Rio de Janeiro.

In part four of our FAccT deep dive, Alix joins Lara Groves and Jacob Metcalf to discuss their paper “ Auditing Work: Exploring the New York City algorithmic bias audit regime”.

Lara Groves is a Senior Researcher at the Ada Lovelace Institute. Her most recent project explored the role of third-party auditing regimes in AI governance. Lara has previously led research on the role of public participation in commercial AI labs, and on algorithmic impact assessments. Her research interests include practical and participatory approaches to algorithmic accountability and innovative policy solutions to challenges of governance.

Before joining Ada, Lara worked as a tech and internet policy consultant, and has experience in research, public affairs and campaigns for think-tanks, political parties and advocacy groups. Lara has an MSc in Democracy from UCL.

Jacob Metcalf, PhD, is a researcher at Data & Society, where he leads the AI on the Ground Initiative, and works on an NSF-funded multisite project, Pervasive Data Ethics for Computational Research (PERVADE). For this project, he studies how data ethics practices are emerging in environments that have not previously grappled with research ethics, such as industry, IRBs, and civil society organizations. His recent work has focused on the new organizational roles that have developed around AI ethics in tech companies.

Jake’s consulting firm, Ethical Resolve, provides a range of ethics services, helping clients to make well-informed, consistent, actionable, and timely business decisions that reflect their values. He also serves as the Ethics Subgroup Chair for the IEEE P7000 Standard.

This episode is hosted by Alix Dunn. Our guests are Lara Groves and Jacob Metcalf.

Further Reading

Lara Groves (Ada Lovelace Institute, UK), Jacob Metcalf (Data & Society Research Institute, USA), Alayna Kennedy (Independent researcher, USA), Briana Vecchione (Data & Society Research Institute, USA) and Andrew Strait (Ada Lovelace Institute, UK)- Auditing Work: Exploring the New York City algorithmic bias audit regime

What the FAccT?: Abandoning Algorithms Jun 28, 2024

Show notes

In this episode, we speak with Nari Johnson and Sanika Moharana at this year’s FAccT conference in Rio de Janeiro.

In part two of our FAccT deep dive, Alix joins Nari Johnson and Sanika Moharana to discuss their paper “The Fall of an Algorithm: Characterizing the Dynamics Toward Abandonment”.

Nari Johnson is a third-year PhD student in Carnegie Mellon University's Machine Learning Department, where she is advised by Hoda Heidari. She graduated from Harvard in 2021 with a BA and MS in Computer Science, where she previously worked with Finale Doshi-Velez.

Sanika Moharana is a second-year PhD student in Human Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University. As an advocate for human-centered design and research, Sanika practices iterative ideation and prototyping for multimodal interactions and interfaces across intelligent systems, connected smart devices, IOT’s, AI experiences, and emerging technologies .

Further Reading

The Fall of an Algorithm: Characterizing the Dynamics Toward Abandonment

What the FAccT?: Reformers and Radicals Jun 21, 2024

Show notes

In part 1 of our FAccT conference deep dive, Alix Dunn sits down with co-host Andrew Strait from the Ada Lovelace Institute to talk about the history of FAccT and some of the papers being presented at this year’s event.

The Fairness, Accountability and Transparency Conference, or FAccT is an interdisciplinary conference dedicated to bringing together a diverse community of scholars and exploring how socio-technical systems could be built in a way that is compatible with a fair society. The seventh annual FAccT conference was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from Monday, June 3rd through Thursday, June 6th 2024 with over five hundred people in attendance.

This episode is hosted by Alix Dunn and our Co-Host is Andrew Strait

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