News & Events

Professor H.V. Jagadish, Bernard A. Galler Collegiate Professor, University of Michigan, gave a lecture on June 13, 2016 titled “Data Ethics: A Socio-Technical Framework for Doing Big Data Right”.

In a broad range of application areas, data are being collected at an unprecedented scale.  Decisions that previously were based on guesswork, or on painstakingly handcrafted models of reality, can now be made using data-driven mathematical models.  Such Big Data analysis now drives nearly every aspect of society, including mobile services, retail, manufacturing, financial services, life sciences, and physical sciences.

While there are many benefits to society from the use of Big Data, there are also concerns.  As patients, we care about the privacy of our medical record; but as patients, we also wish to benefit from the analysis of data in medical records. As citizens, we want a fair trial before being punished for a crime; but as citizens, we want to stop terrorists before they attack us.  As decision-makers, we value the advice we get from data-driven algorithms; but as decision-makers, we also worry about unintended bias. 

How should we maximize the benefits we derive from Big Data while minimizing the harms?  This requires a framework for analyzing the impacts of Big Data, a social consensus on ethical Data Science, and technical solutions to enable desired tradeoffs.  In short, the solution is socio-technical.  This talk presented examples of solutions to specific aspects of this challenge.