Events
April 9, 2024
IAS Public Policy Lecture: Margrethe Vestager, Three Things Oppenheimer Tells us About Tech
Margrethe Vestager, the Executive Vice President of the European Commission for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age and a leading global voice on technology policy and equitable innovation, delivered the 2024 IAS Public Policy Lecture, followed by a Q&A led by Alondra Nelson, the Harold F. Linder Chair in the School of Social Science.
January 24, 2024
Exploring AI Threats to Electoral Integrity
AI Democracy Projects founders—award-winning investigative journalist Julia Angwin and Alondra Nelson, Harold F. Linder Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, and the Honorable Francisco V. Aguilar, Nevada Secretary of State, in conversation with SIPA Lecturer Camille François about the potential risks and benefits to the US election ecosystem presented by AI, and how policymakers, AI experts, and journalists can begin to test AI tools for electoral-information integrity in a way that provides education, information, and accountability to the public.
October 19, 2023
Thick Alignment, Ethics in AI Annual Lecture, University of Oxford
What is thick alignment? Nelson draws on the notion of “thick descriptions” as taken by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, who himself drew inspiration from Gilbert Ryle’s work. In Geertz’s view, thin descriptions of cultures merely observe the actions of these individuals, whereas thick descriptions go beyond the surface and attempt to capture the deeper layers of meaning embedded in a culture. Translating that to her topic, what we might call “thin alignment” focuses on technically encoding values into AI. We must pay closer attention to the social contexts in which we deploy AI technologies and reject the idea that there are value-neutral uses of these technologies. (Kyle Van Oosterum)
September 20, 2023
Building the World We Want: Artificial Intelligence and Global Governance
IAS scholar and writer Alondra Nelson led a discussion on the transnational impacts of artificial intelligence and the need for global collaboration with Karen Kornbluh, Distinguished Fellow for Technology and Competitiveness at the German Marshall Fund of the U.S. and former U.S. Ambassador to the OECD; Maria Ressa, CEO and President of Rappler and Nobel laureate; Olatunbosun Tijani, the Honorable Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy for the Republic of Nigeria; and Tim Wu, Julius Silver Professor of Law, Science and Technology at Columbia University, and an introduction from Director and Leon Levy Professor David Nirenberg.
June 6, 2023
Steering AI for the Public Good
A panel of computer scientists, social scientists, technology developers, and policy advisors from the AI Policy and Governance Working Group discussed how the research community, industry, government, civil society, and the public can work collaboratively on strategies for the development of AI systems that embed a diverse and representative range of humanity’s priorities and advance democratic values. With Miranda Bogen, Brian Christian, Sorelle Friedler and William Isaac, in conversation with Harold F. Linder Professor Alondra Nelson, with an introduction from Director and Leon Levy Professor David Nirenberg.
November 6, 2019
Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Society
A Cross-Disciplinary Conversation with Pedro Domingos, University of Washington, and Mary Gray, Microsoft and Harvard University; moderated by Alondra Nelson, Harold F. Linder Professor, School of Social Science.