Cancelled: Identifying Discrimination in Online Social Network Advertising
Important note: The organizers had to cancel this event due to a flight cancellation.
Guest Lecture by Professor Alan Mislove
Can algorithms quietly exclude people from opportunities like jobs, housing, or credit? Are online ads treating everyone fairly, and how would we even know? Who decides which ads you see, and on what basis? What happens when automated advertising crosses the line from personalization to discrimination?
This guest lecture by Professor Alan Mislove will examine how discrimination can arise in online social network advertising and how it can be identified through empirical analysis. Drawing on methods from algorithmic auditing, he will discuss how large-scale advertising and recommendation systems operate in practice, how they may produce biased or unequal outcomes, and what tools researchers can use to study these effects in real-world settings. The talk will address broader questions of algorithmic fairness, transparency, and accountability, with attention to the implications for regulation and public policy.
The presentation will be followed by Q&A session where participants will have a chance to ask questions and engage in interactive discussion on translating technical research into policy action. We will be informed by the speaker’s experience advising regulators and serving in government, including his time in the White House.
About the Lecturer:
Alan Mislove is a Professor and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. His research is on algorithmic auditing. He develops methodologies and study the real-world systems that millions of users interact with every day, focusing on issues of algorithmic discrimination, fairness, and privacy. His aim is to enable regulators, policymakers, and everyday people to better understand how these systems work, how they are used and abused, and what impacts they are having on users and society at large.
Prof. Mislove’s research comprises over 80 peer-reviewed papers, has received over 25,000 citations, and has been supported by over $10M in grants from government agencies and industrial partners. He is a recipient of an NSF CAREER Award (2011), a Google Faculty Award (2012), the ACM SIGCOMM Test of Time Award (2017), the IETF Applied Networking Research Prize (2018, 2019), the USENIX Security Distinguished Paper Award (2017), the NDSS Distinguished Paper Award (2018), the IEEE Cybersecurity Award for Innovation (2017), the IMC Distinguished Paper Award (2022), and a Facebook Secure the Internet Grant (2018). He has testified before Congress and briefed members of Congress and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors on issues of algorithmic fairness. He was a plaintiff in an ACLU lawsuit that successfully challenged the constitutionality of the CFAA for online anti-discrimination research. His work has been covered by the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the CBS Evening News. Between January 2023 and August 2024, he served in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, most recently as Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer for Privacy.
Language / Sprache: English
Contact / Kontakt: DSI Community AI & Law
Organisation:Prof. Anikó Hannak