MIT Ethics of Computing Research Symposium

On April 30, the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) will host the third annual MIT Ethics in Computing Research Symposium. This day-long event will feature MIT faculty research presentations, a keynote address by Jon Kleinberg, Tisch University Professor of Computer Science and Information Science at Cornell University, and panel discussions on AI alignment and the future of education with participants from OpenAI and Google DeepMind.

Speakers will examine foundational and applied challenges in AI, including collective harms from individually beneficial systems, fairness-constrained machine learning for public policy, ethical computer vision, human-robot interaction, environmental forecasting, virtue-based AI policies in schools, and model verification—bridging technical advances with questions of accountability and social impact.

The symposium will also feature a SERC Scholars poster session showcasing student research from first-year undergraduates to PhD candidates. Poster topics will range from chatbot friends and risk-averse AI systems to the environmental impacts of AI, highlighting the breadth of emerging scholarship in ethical computing.

The symposium will conclude with a keynote address by Kleinberg, whose research explores networks, algorithms, and the social and information systems that underpin the Web and other online media.

Register Here

Agenda

  • 8:00 AM | Breakfast
  • 9:00 AM | Welcome Remarks
  • 9:10 AM | Faculty Talks
    • Personal Benefit, Collective Harm: Differential Impact of AI on Individual and Crowd Wisdom Judgment
      Drazen Prelec, Digital Equipment Corp. Leaders for Global Operations Professor of Management, MIT Sloan School of Management
    • Addressing Regressive Property Taxation with Fairness-Constrained Differentiable Machine Learning
      Haihao Lu, Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Assistant Professor, MIT Sloan
    • Ethical Frameworks for Responsible Deployment of Computer Vision in Public Interactive Installations
      Joshua Higgason, Professor of the Practice, Music and Theater Arts Section
  • 10:25 AM | Break
  • 10:40 AM | A New Criterion for AI Alignment: Moral Meshing
    • Bernardo Zacka, Associate Professor, Political Science
    • Bailey Flanigan, Assistant Professor, Political Science and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS)
  • 11:00 AM | AI Alignment Panel
    • Bernardo Zacka, Associate Professor, Political Science
    • Bailey Flanigan, Assistant Professor, Political Science and EECS
    • Boaz Barak, Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Technical Staff, OpenAI
    • Iason Gabriel, Philosopher and Research Scientist, Google DeepMind
    • Moderated by Dylan Hadfield-Menell, Associate Professor, EECS
  • 12:00 PM | Lunch & SERC Scholars Poster Session
  • 1:15 PM | Faculty Talks
    • Show, Tell, and Adapt: Aligning Robot Behavior via Multimodal Communication
      Andreea Bobu, Assistant Professor, Aeronautics and Astronautics
    • A Framework for Machine-Learned Forecasts of Air Pollution in the Contiguous United States
      Tamara Broderick, Associate Professor, EECS, Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS)

      Arlene Fiore, Peter H. Stone and Paola Malanotte Stone Professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
    • Toward Responsible, Virtue-Based AI Policies in Schools
      Cynthia Breazeal, Professor, MIT Media Lab
  • 2:30 PM | Break
  • 2:40 PM | AI Education Panel
    • Justin Reich, Associate Professor, Comparative Media Studies/Writing
    • Eric Klopfer, Professor and Director of the Scheller Teacher Education Program
    • Sam Madden, MIT College of Computing Distinguished Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
    • Pat Pataranutaporn, Assistant Professor, Media Arts and Sciences
    • Marta McAlister, Director, Gemini for Education
  • 3:30 PM | Faculty Talk
    • Label-Efficient Selection and Verification of AI Models
      Sara Beery, Assistant Professor, EECS
  • 3:55 PM | Break
  • 4:15 PM | Keynote Address
    • Jon Kleinberg, Tisch University Professor of Computer Science and Information Science, Cornell University