Join the Harvard Law & Technology Society and the Journal of Law & Technology for a book talk featuring OpenAI's David Robinson and his recent book Voices in the Code: A Story about People\, Their Values\, and the Algorithm They Made.
Please RSVP for the lunch event here.
There will also be an opportun ity for four\, 15-minute 1:1s with David Robinson\, which you can signup fo r here! (You'll be notified of your participation on Monday evening)
Speaker Bio:
David Robinson\, currently a member of the Safety Systems team at OpenAI\, is a student and practitioner of the governance of high stakes algorithms. Prior to his current role he originated the Policy Planning function on Ope nAI's Global Affairs team\, taught at Apple University\, and cofounded Uptu rn\, a DC-based nonprofit that brings technical expertise to civil rights p olicy advocacy.
Talk Description:
Algo rithms–rules written into software–shape key moments in our lives: from who gets hired or admitted to a top public school\, to who should go to jail o r receive scarce public benefits. Today\, high stakes software is rarely op en to scrutiny\, but its code navigates moral questions: Which of a person’ s traits are fair to consider as part of a job application? Who deserves pr iority in accessing scarce public resources\, whether those are school seat s\, housing\, or medicine? When someone first appears in a courtroom\, how should their freedom be weighed against the risks they might pose to others ?
Today policymakers and scholars are seeking better ways to share th e moral decisionmaking within high stakes software — exploring ideas like p ublic participation\, transparency\, forecasting\, and algorithmic audits. But there are few real examples of those techniques in use.
In Voices in the Code\, scholar David G. Ro binson tells the story of how one community built a life-and-death a lgorithm in a relatively inclusive\, accountable way. Between 2004 and 2014 \, a diverse group of patients\, surgeons\, clinicians\, data scientists\, public officials and advocates collaborated and compromised to build a new transplant matching algorithm – a system to offer donated kidneys to partic ular patients from the U.S. national waiting list.
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