Past Project: Precarity
This research is an interdisciplinary study of financial instability and inequity when subject to the uncertainty of automated decisions. We do this via the modeling of artificial societies - which are computer simulations or computational models designed to imitate and investigate the behavior of complex social systems.
Financial instability is a condition of the modern world. To study financial instability, we draw on the concept of “precarity.” Precarity is a term that characterizes the latent instability - precariousness - and therefore vulnerability of people's lives. It is also the manifestation of the phenomenon where one bad decision has ripple effects by directly (or indirectly) affecting future decisions. For example, repeated credit card denials result in denial of mortgage loan applications and exacerbation of other components of an individual's financial wellbeing. Our goal is to build realistic agent-based modeling frameworks that capture the behavior of individuals and the resultant ML tools' precarity.
Contact:
Pegah Nohkiz
Brown Computer Science PhD Graduate, Postdoc at Cornell University
Problem: Grassroots organizers work in the digital and physical world, and use social media extensively for networking and organizing. This exposes them to surveillance and disinformation campaigns, and that leads to physical violence and incarceration.
Goal: To build cryptographic tools for grassroots organizing so that organizers can connect and trust each other without revealing info to those surveilling them from outside their community.
Status: Cryptographic protocols have been developed: Looking for collaborators to help implement the protocols in mobile apps.
Contact:
Seny Kamara
Visiting Associate Professor of Computer ScienceLeah Rosenbloom
Brown Computer Science PhD Graduate, Postdoc at Northeastern UniversityJohn Wilkinson
Undergraduate Student