DSSN Symposium: Policy Algorithms, Bias, and Automating Inequality

POSTPONED: April 15: DSSN Symposium: Algorithms, Bias, and Automating Inequality

Virginia Eubanks, Associate Professor of Political Science, University at Albany: "Automating Insecurity: Digital Debt Collection and the Predator State"

Ewa Plonowska Ziarek, Julian Park Professor of Comparative Literature and Global Gender and Sexuality Studies, University at Buffalo: "The Ends of Thinking in the Computational Age"

In 2018’s Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks systematically investigated the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models on poor and working-class people. In it, she argues that new high-tech tools in public services in the United States divert the poor from public resources, classify and criminalize whole communities, and predict future behavior as a mechanism of social control. More recently, Eubanks has been writing about the toll that digital debt collection takes on working-class families. Join us for a lively conversation about Eubanks’ new reporting for The Guardian, which uncovered for the first time the true scope and impact of government Zombie debt in the U.S.

With comments and moderated by Evviva Weinraub Lajoie, Vice Provost of UB Libraries.

Additional Remarks by David Doermann, UB Computer Science and Engineering

3:30-5:30pm, Capen 567