Algorithms for the People (CS 1952V)
Instructors: Kweku Kwegyir-Aggrey, Julia Netter, Lucy Qin
Emails: kweku@brown.edu, julia_netter@brown.edu, LQ@brown.edu
Course Email: csci1952v@brown.edu
Office hours: by appointment, sign up through course email
Course Description
In this course we will examine how technology affects marginalized communities. In our analysis, we hope to better understand how power and identity affect the creation of technology, and how these dynamics exclude marginalized groups, and the harmful consequences of this exclusion. This is a discussion-based seminar which will focus on the following themes: surveillance, protest movements, the technical needs of specific user groups, content moderation, and machine learning.
Pre-Requisites
Graduate students: none
Undergrad CS concentrators: either 300, 320 or 330
Undergrad non-CS concentrators: email us
Course Schedule (preliminary)
Readings subject to change
| Dates |
Topic |
Readings |
Note |
| Sep 14 |
Overview |
|
|
| Sep 16 |
Responsibility |
P. Rogaway. (pages 1-10) The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work
R. Abebe, S. Barocas, J. Kleinberg, K. Levy, M. Raghavan, D. Robinson. Roles for Computing in Social Change
|
|
| Sep 21 |
Surveillance |
S. Kamara. COINTELPRO primer.
The US Senate Church Committee. (pages 1-20) The Church Report
|
|
| Sep 23 |
Surveillance |
The CLEAR Project. Mapping Muslims
|
|
| Sep 28 |
Surveillance |
The Policing in Chicago Research Group. Accountability After Abolition
M. Stern. Federal judge accused ICE of making up evidence to prove that Dreamer was "gang-affiliated".
|
|
| Sep 30 |
Surveillance |
M. Funk. How ICE Picks Its Targets in the Surveillance Age
J. Ulloa. ICE is tracking immigrants with the help of California sanctuary cities, court records show
C. Edmondson. ICE Used Facial Recognition to Mine State Driver’s License Databases
|
Project list out |
| Oct 5 |
Protest Movements |
A. Brown, W. Parrish, A. Speri. Leaked Documents Reveal Counterterrorism Tactics Used at Standing Rock to “Defeat Pipeline Insurgencies”
A. Brown, W. Parrish, A. Speri. Standing Rock Documents Expose Inner Workings of “Surveillance-Industrial Complex”
A. Brown, W. Parrish, A. Speri. Police Used Private Security Aircraft for Surveillance in Standing Rock No-Fly Zone
|
|
| Oct 7 |
Protest Movements |
S. Biddle. Police Surveilled George Floyd Protests With Help From Twitter-Affiliated Startup Dataminr
S. Biddle. LAPD Sought Ring Home Security Video Related to Black Lives Matter Protests
|
|
| Oct 12 |
Protest Movements |
S. Morrison, A. Estes. How protesters are turning the tables on police surveillance
M. Albrecht, J. Blasco, R. Jensen, L. Marekova. Collective Information Security in Large-Scale Urban Protests: the Case of Hong Kong
|
Projects chosen |
| Oct 14 |
Technical needs of user groups |
T. Jenkins. Talking with Vula
|
|
| Oct 19 |
Technical needs of user groups |
K. Owens, C. Cobb, L. Cranor. “You Gotta Watch What You Say”: Surveillance of Communication with Incarcerated People
|
|
| Oct 21 |
Technical needs of user groups |
M. Whittaker, M. Alper, C. Bennett, S. Hendren, L. Kaziunas, M. Mills, M. Ringel Morris, J. Rankin, E. Rogers, M. Salas, S. Myers West. Disability, Bias, and AI
|
|
| Oct 26 |
Technical needs of user groups |
M. Corcoran. When Alexa Can’t Understand You
A. Koenecke, et. al. Racial disparities in automated speech recognition
(Optional) D. Amodei, et. al.
Deep Speech 2 : End-to-End Speech Recognition in English and Mandarin
|
|
| Oct 28 |
Content Moderation |
K. Thomas, et. al. SoK: Hate, Harassment, and the Changing Landscape of Online Abuse
C. Newton. The Terror Queue
E. Dwoskin, N. Tiku, H. Kelly. Facebook to start policing anti-Black hate speech more aggressively than anti-White comments, documents show
|
|
| Nov 2 |
US Election |
No class
|
|
| Nov 4 |
Content Moderation
|
T. McLaughlin. How Facebook’s Rise Fueled Chaos and Confusion in Myanmar
Business for Social Responsibility. Human Rights Impact Assessment: Facebook in Myanmar
|
|
| Nov 9 |
Content Moderation |
M. Ribeiro, R. Ottoni, R. West, V. Almeida, W. Meira Jr. Auditing Radicalization Pathways on YouTube
H. Al Khatib, D. Kayyali. YouTube Is Erasing History
(Optional) D. Zulli, D. Zulli. Extending the Internet meme: Conceptualizing technological mimesis and imitation publics on the TikTok platform
|
|
| Nov 11 |
Machine Learning |
A. Selbst, d. boyd, S. Friedler, S. Venkatasubramanian, J. Vertesi. Fairness and Abstraction in Sociotechnical Systems
A. Hoffmann. Where fairness fails: data, algorithms, and the limits of antidiscrimination discourse
|
|
| Nov 16 |
Machine Learning |
P. McGreevy. Prop. 25 rejected in 2020 California election
M. Bao, et. al. It’s COMPASlicated: The Messy Relationship between RAI Datasets and Algorithmic Fairness Benchmarks
W. Heavens Bias isn't the only problem with credit scores
|
|
| Nov 18 |
Machine Learning |
L. Wynants, et. al. Three myths about risk thresholds for prediction models
B. Mittelstadt. Auditing for Transparency in Content Personalization Systems
|
|
| Nov 23 |
Project presentations |
|
|
| Nov 25 |
Thanksgiving |
No class |
|
| Nov 30 |
Project Presentations |
|
|
| Dec 2 |
Project Presentations |
|
|
| Dec 7 |
Reading period |
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