Elisa Celis, Assistant Professor of Statistics & Data Science, Yale University

The Good, the Bad, and Ugly of Artificial Intelligence

Elisa Celis is an assistant professor in the Statistics & Data Science department at Yale University. She studies the manifestation of social and economic biases in our online lives via the algorithms that encode and perpetuate them. Her research leverages both experimental and theoretical approaches, and her work spans multiple disciplines including data science, machine learning, fairness in socio-technical systems and algorithm design. At Yale she co-founded the Computation and Society Initiative.

Elayne DeLeo talks with Elisa Celis, an artificial intelligence (AI) researcher and professor on the inherent biases encoded in AI and how social platforms like Facebook are lulling users into a false sense of security around their personal data. She discusses how data such as facial recognition is being used and misused, how Facebook and other platforms leverage user patterns to feed a larger percentage of emotional content to users, why ethical AI practitioners need to play a major role on digital platforms, and how these platforms know more than you think they know including how you might be thinking about getting a divorce.