The Information Science Department Presents

The INFO Science Seminar Series

Every Wednesday at 1:35 P.M. in CASE W262 (unless otherwise noted)

Refreshments will be served in the Information Science Building lobby directly BEFORE the talk from 12:45 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.

To sign-up to receive virtual attendance information, please join the Google Group Infocolloquium@colorado.edu

When Data Is People: Considering Ethics, Privacy, and Ownership for Research & AI Uses of Public Data 

Casey Fiesler, INFO Faculty

In U.S. academic settings, research uses of publicly available data such as social media content typically does not fall under the regulated umbrella of human subjects research, and therefore is often overlooked in discussions of research ethics. Similarly, recent attention to Common Crawl and other widespread web scraping for the purposes of training AI systems such as ChatGPT has sparked conversation about both the legal and ethical implications of using public data without consent. This talk unpacks some of the normative, legal, and ethical considerations for both of these contexts, with an emphasis on unintended consequences, vulnerable populations and what questions academics and developers should asking of themselves and the data they collect.

Casey Fiesler is an associate professor in Information Science (and Computer Science by courtesy) at University of Colorado Boulder. She researches and teaches in the areas of technology ethics, internet law and policy, and online communities. Also a public scholar, she is a frequent commentator and speaker on topics of technology ethics and policy, and though her work has been covered everywhere from The New York Times to Teen Vogue, she is particularly proud of her TikToks. She holds a PhD in Human-Centered Computing from Georgia Tech and a JD from Vanderbilt Law School.