Rarely a week goes by without a negative headline about the internet – from teenagers’ mental health and racist algorithms to online conspiracy theories and the power of big tech.
In this lively discussion with some of the world’s leading thinkers, we reassess our relationship with the internet and set out a positive vision of how it can be improved so we can reshape the digital world into a space where we can all flourish.
We discuss how social scientists and politicians are working with computer scientists to use AI and machine-learning to make the internet safer and better.
In partnership with the Institute of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Exeter
Speakers
Helen Margetts OBE
Director of the Public Policy Programme, Professor of Society and the Internet
The Alan Turing Institute
University of Oxford
Helen Margetts is a Turing Fellow and Director of the Public Policy Programme at The Alan Turing Institute, and Professor of Society and the Internet at the University of Oxford and Professorial Fellow of Mansfield College. From 2011 to 2018, she was Director of the Oxford Internet Institute, a multi-disciplinary department of the University of Oxford dedicated to understanding the relationship between the Internet and society, before which she was UCL’s first professor of Political Science and Director of the School of Public Policy (1999-2004). After an undergraduate degree in Mathematics, she worked as a computer programmer and systems analyst for Rank Xerox and Amoco before returning to study political science at LSE (MSc 1990, PhD 1996), where she also worked as a researcher
Silvia Milano
Lecturer in Philosophy of Data and Data Ethics
Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (IDSAI)
University of Exeter
Milano is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Philosophy of Data and Data Ethics in the SPA Department and Egenis centre at the University of Exeter. Prior to joining Exeter, she was a Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) in the Faculty of Philosophy and a William Golding Junior Research Fellow at Brasenose College, University of Oxford.
Her work focuses on the epistemological and ethical issues of AI systems, and she has published research on the ethical challenges of personalised targeting and recommender systems.
Chico Camargo
Lecturer in Computer Science (E&R)
Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (IDSAI)
University of Exeter
Camargo is a Lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Exeter, a research associate at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, member of the Council of the Complex Systems Society, Computational Social Science theme lead at the Institute for Data Science and AI, and the director of the CC Lab.
Ritula Shah (chair)
Lead Presenter, The World Tonight
BBC Radio 4
Previously producer of Today and presenter of Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4, Ritula Shah became the lead presenter of The World Tonight in 2013.
Mohsen Mosleh
Lecturer in Business Analytics
Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (IDSAI)
University of Exeter
Mohsen is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the University of Exeter Business School, a Fellow at Alan Turing Institute, and a Research Affiliate at MIT Sloan School of Management. Mohsen has been a postdoctoral fellow at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Department of Psychology at Yale University. Prior to his post-doctoral studies, Mohsen received his PhD from Stevens Institute of Technology in Systems Engineering with a minor in Business Intelligence and Analytics. He has five years of prior industry experience as a Software & Systems Integration Lead. Mohsen’s research interests lie at the intersection of computational/data science and cognitive/social science. In particular, he studies how information and misinformation spread on social media, collective decision-making, and cooperation. His work has been published in leading journals such as Nature, Nature Communications, PNAS, and CHI and has been covered in major media outlets including The Washington Post, the Telegraph and the Financial Times.