CSCI 6370 / CSCI 4370 / ITWS 6970 / ITWS 4960: Data and Society

Instructor: Professor Francine Berman, bermaf_at_rpi.edu
Spring Semester 2021, Mondays and Thursdays: 12:20 p.m. - 2:10 p.m.
Office Hours by appointment, contact bermaf@rpi.edu

COURSE ELIGIBILITY

The course is open to all students at all levels at RPI. Contact instructor for approval if needed.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Data and Society focuses on how data is changing how we work and live. The course provides an overview of the data-driven world touching on big data, the Internet of Things, data privacy, digital rights, data and discrimination, and other topics. Course meetings consist of lectures, discussion, student presentations and guest speakers.

Data and Society is a communication-intensive course. Assignments will help build writing, presentation, and critical thinking and assessment skills, all of which are important for professional success. The course is on-line and the link is available only to students enrolled in the course.

Reading: What happens when you click 'agree'?, New York Times

Reading: Why it's so freaking hard to make a good COVID-19 model, 538

Presentations
• The swiss cheese model of pandemic defense, New York Times
• The architecture of mass vaccine distribution, Bloomberg CityLab

Readings
• The coup we are not talking about, New York Times
• What privacy is for, Harvard Law Review

Presentations
• Are vaccine providers selling your health data? There's not much stopping them, Vox
• WHO plans privacy, security rules for COVID-19 vaccine certificates, Wall Street Journal

Presentations
• Changes to the census could make small towns disappear, New York Times
• Can a set of equations keep U.S. census data private?, Science

Reading: The fantasy of oping out, MIT Press Reader

Presentations
• We're banning facial recognition. We're missing the point, New York Times
• This site published every face from Parler's Capitol riot videos, Wired

Reading: Ben Wizner: Pull back to reveal, Guernica

Presentations
• Analysis: California privacy reboot puts rights in spotlight, Bloomberg law
• How the West got China's social credit system wrong, Wired
• Grindr on the hook for 10M euro violations over GDPR consent violations, TechCrunch

Watch: Cathy O'Neil's TED Talk

Presentations
• Where do the vaccine doses go and who gets them. The algorithms decide., New York Times
• Getting a Coved Vaccine can be required by your boss. Why that's a good thing -- and a danger, NBC News
• To fix social media now, focus on privacy, not on platforms, The Hill

Reading: Fighting AI bias needs to be part of Biden's civil rights agenda, Fast Company

Presentations
• Is an algorithm less racist than a loan officer?, New York Times
• Federal study confirms racial bias of many facial recognition systems, casts doubt on their expanding use, Washington Post

Reading: Scientist use big data to sway elections and predict riots -- welcome to the 1960's, Nature

Presentations
• Estonia leads the world in making digital voting a reality, Financial Times
• MIT experts issue warning about electronic voting; blockchain-based systems are not ready for prime time, CPO Magazine

Reading: Political campaigns and big data, Journal of Economic Perspectives

Presentations
• Election forecast models are worth more attention than polls, Bloomberg Opinion
• Which 2020 election polls were most - and least - accurate?, Washington Post

Reading: Astronomers Find 9,000-Light-Year-Long Wave-Shaped Structure in Milky Way, Sci-News

Presentations
• Hunting for a giant black hole, astronomers found a nest of darkness, New York Times
• Nasa's Webb telescope will be the world's premier space science observatory -- Here's what those powerful capabilities mean for astronomy, SciTechDaily

Reading: How companies learn your secrets, New York Times

Presentations
• Why so many data science projects fail to deliver, Sloan Management Review
• Using big data to measure environmental inclusivity in cities, EOS

Watch: Hypertext and the Digital Humanities

Presentations
• New open source database tracks data on slaves, slavers and allies, Harvard Gazette
• Robo-writers: the rise and risks of language-generating AI, Nature

Reading: The Internet Archive is making Wikipedia more reliable, Wired

Presentations
• How scientists scrambled to stop Donald Trump's EPA from wiping out climate data, The Verge
• Scientific journals have disappeared from the Internet, Nature

Reading: The Wired Guide to the Internet of Things, Wired

Presentations
• Animal Planet, New York Times
• Ring and Nest helped normalize American surveillance and turned us into a nation of voyeurs, Washington Post

Reading: From Data to Tomato

Presentations
• Smart farms are hackable farms, IEEE Spectrum
• Farms are going to need different kinds of robots, BBC News

Watch Chris Urmson's TED talk

Presentations
• Your self driving car isn't ready. Smarter roads might change that, CNN Business
• Waymo simulated real world crashes to prove its self-driving cars can prevent deaths, The Verge

Reading: the Trolley Dilemma -- would you kill one person to save five?, The Conversation

Presentations
• Vaccine passports pose ethical thicket for Biden administration, Politico
• 'It's bigger than just Tinmit': How Google tried to silence a critic and ignited a movement, Fast Company

Reading: Click Here to Kill Everyone, New York Magazine

Presentations
• New wave of hacktivism adds twist to cybersecurity woes, Reuters
• Clop ransomware gang breaches University of Colorado and University of Miami, Security Magazine

Reading: How private is your on-line dating data?, Consumer Reports

Presentation
• This cuffing season, it's time to consider the privacy of dating apps, Brooking Institution

Reading: EU plan for risk-based AI rules to set fines as high as 4% of global turnover, per leaked draft, TechCrunch

Presentations
• What a gambling app knows about you, New York Times
• Can computer algorithms learn to fight wars ethically?, Washington Post