I’m excited to announce that registration for the first workshop on Data and Algorithmic Transparency is now open. The workshop will take place at NYU on Nov 19. It convenes an emerging interdisciplinary community that seeks transparency and oversight of data-driven algorithmic systems through empirical research.
Despite the short notice of the workshop’s announcement (about six weeks before the submission deadline), we were pleasantly surprised by the number and quality of the submissions that we received. We ended up accepting 15 papers, more than we’d originally planned to, and still had to turn away good papers. The program includes both previously published work and original papers submitted to the workshop, and has just the kind of multidisciplinary mix we were looking for.
We settled on a format that’s different from the norm but probably familiar to many of you. We have five panels, one on each of the five main themes that emerged from the papers. The panels will begin with brief presentations, with the majority of the time devoted to in-depth discussions led by one or two commenters who will have read the papers beforehand and will engage with the authors. We welcome the audience to participate; to enable productive discussion, we encourage you to read or skim the papers beforehand. The previously published papers are available to read; the original papers will be made available in a few days.
I’m very grateful to everyone on our program committee for their hard work in reviewing and selecting papers. We received very positive feedback from authors on the quality of reviews of the original papers, and I was impressed by the work that the committee put in.
Finally, note that the workshop will take place at NYU rather than Columbia as originally announced. We learnt some lessons on the difficulty of finding optimal venues in New York City on a limited budget. Thanks to Solon Barocas and Augustin Chaintreau for their efforts in helping us find a suitable venue!
See you in three weeks, and don’t forget the related and colocated DTL and FAT-ML events.
