New Rights to Know - a public seminar wth Frank Pasquale

Data Access in the Context of Automated Decision Making

CAIDE and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society are delighted to host Frank Pasquale, professor of law at Brooklyn Law School, and author of the seminal books 'The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information' and 'New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI', for an evening seminar on the limits and virtues of  individual's data rights.

If a company gathers data about someone, should that person be entitled to inspect the information, and correct errors? If an algorithmic lender decides to raise a borrower's interest rate based on a constant stream of data gathered from their cell phone, should the borrower be able to review the data, and demand some accounting for why they need to pay more? And if an automated check-out kiosk categorizes a customer as a "potential threat," and calls security, should the customer be able to learn why they were classified in this way—or at least what data was used to make the determination?

Answers to questions like these will help determine the fairness and intelligibility of commercial life for years to come. Expansive deployments of “big data” and AI to judge consumers and workers have highlighted potential uses of a venerable, but newly controversial, aspect of fair information practices: a data subject’s right to access information collected about them, including how the data was used in profiling and decision-making.This talk will explore the virtues and limits of such rights, focusing on a case study proposing four levels of access and explanation. Rights to access are only likely to make a significant difference when robust civil society institutions help individuals understand and act on their rights to data.

Location: Online (Zoom link available upon registration)

Time: 5:15pm - 6.15pm