Berkman Klein Center

In this third and final session of the TechReg in AI series with Professor Alan Raul, we consider what constitutes an “AI incident” for policy and governance purposes. Who is monitoring and reporting them? How does the concept account for foreseeable harms, near misses, and distinctions between systems performing as intended versus those that are malfunctioning, maliciously compromised, or acting in novel or unexpected manners? As we dig into today’s incident-monitoring ecosystem, we’ll discuss relevant challenges such as underreporting, selection bias, confidentiality, reproducibility and how to translate scattered, anecdotal events into meaningful evidence for risk management and harm prevention.

The panel Why I Changed My Mind features HLS faculty members’ stories of professional moments of reckoning when ideas they had previously thought settled in their worldview changed.

The news industry has two primary tasks: Accurately report what’s going on and present that info in a way that reaches people. It’s been failing at the latter — as of 2024, more people say they deeply distrust the media than trust it, and audiences are moving from traditional outlets to social platforms and individual creators. Ben Reininga, former Head of Editorial at Snapchat and 2024/5 Nieman & Berkman-Klein fellow is researching what makes users trust news videos — with the hope of providing more insight and tools to news publishers to help them connect with users.

The TechReg Reading Group (TRRG) is a series of faculty guided discussions about TechReg policy developments as they are announced by the Trump Administration (White House, OMB, OSTP, Commerce, DHS, DOJ, FCC, FTC, etc.). Specific topics will likely include Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Privacy, Electronic Surveillance, Emerging Technologies & National Security, Internet Speech & Social Media, and International Data Flows. Topics and discussion will be guided by HLS Lecturer on Law and  Berkman Klein Center Affiliate, Alan Raul, with invited guests as topics warrant. 

In cybersecurity, red-teaming involves simulating attacks to assess system vulnerabilities. This session introduces the use of red-teaming as a policy tool which can help to identify weaknesses in the privacy-focused law and policy that stems from emerging technologies. We will explore cybersecurity frameworks for red-teaming and how these frameworks can be systematically applied for assessing privacy-related policies and legislation.