Last week I participated on a panel about the National AI Research Resource (NAIRR), a proposed computing and data resource for academic AI researchers. The NAIRR’s goal is to subsidize the spiraling costs of many types of AI research that have put them out of reach of most academic groups. My comments on the panel […]
Holding Purveyors of “Dark Patterns” for Online Travel Bookings Accountable
March 21, 2022 by
Last week, my former colleagues at the New York Attorney General’s Office (NYAG), scored a $2.6 million settlement with Fareportal – a large online travel agency that used deceptive practices, known as “dark patterns,” to manipulate consumers to book online travel. The investigation exposes how Fareportal, which operates under several brands, including CheapOair and OneTravel […]
Can Classes on Field Experiments Scale? Lessons from SOC412
July 16, 2018 by
Last semester, I taught a Princeton undergrad/grad seminar on the craft, politics, and ethics of behavioral experimentation. The idea was simple: since large-scale human subjects research is now common outside universities, we need to equip students to make sense of that kind of power and think critically about it. In this post, I share lessons for teaching […]
Teaching the Craft, Ethics, and Politics of Field Experiments
July 3, 2018 by
How can we manage the politics and ethics of large-scale online behavioral research? When this question came up in April during a forum on Defending Democracy at Princeton, Ed Felten mentioned on stage that I was teaching a Princeton undergrad class on this very topic. No pressure! Ed was right about the need: people with […]
Princeton Dialogues of AI and Ethics: Launching case studies
May 21, 2018 by
Summary: We are releasing four case studies on AI and ethics, as part of the Princeton Dialogues on AI and Ethics. The impacts of rapid developments in artificial intelligence (“AI”) on society—both real and not yet realized—raise deep and pressing questions about our philosophical ideals and institutional arrangements. AI is currently applied in a wide […]
