Surveillance Studies Centre Seminar

“Fix the data!” “Fix the algorithm!” These calls have become popular proposals to address algorithmic discrimination. Drawing on two years of field work with computer scientists who developed an algorithmic surveillance system, my book argues that justice in AI is not only a narrow question of the algorithms themselves and the data they use and produce. Rather, it is a much more expansive question about the people who make them, and importantly, the cultures which shape how they think and what they do: academic cultures of computer science. Rather than hastily investing in more techno-fixes, perhaps it is time to ask some hard questions about what computer science teaches students about society.

About the speaker:

Norma Möllers is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Queen’s, an Associate Member of the Surveillance Studies Centre, and an Affiliate Member of Ingenuity Labs. Her research has examined the politics of artificial intelligence, algorithmic decision-making systems, digital surveillance technologies, and cybersecurity. The broader aim of her research is to understand how digital technologies produce, maintain, or unsettle larger societal patterns of power and inequity, focusing specifically on understanding technologically-mediated processes of marginalization and oppression.