From platforms that review mortgage applications and resumes to predicting defendants’ likelihood of reoffending, AI systems and the algorithms behind them are used to make quick and effective decisions in areas with major consequences, including health care, hiring and criminal justice.
Although the potential of AI is immense, its early adoption has faced recurring challenges: a real estate loan processing algorithm was much more likely to turn down applications from people of color than white candidates; recruitment algorithms intended to select candidates are increasingly used without looking carefully under the hood and AI-based software used by the US criminal justice system has been twice as likely to falsely predict future criminality among black defendants as among white defendants.
Now more than ever, at the dawn of an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered future, Cornell’s leadership in AI and in the areas of ethics and technological equity guides both developing better and fairer AI and shaping the minds of future AI innovators. .
“At Cornell Bowers CIS, we really benefit from the close connections between fields that, at first glance, seem quite disparate: computer science, information science, statistics, economics, sociology, law and scientific and technological studies,” declared Jon Kleinberg ’93, professor of computer science at Tisch University. “These areas were brought together under Bowers CIS by this common interest in the impact of technology on society.”
As a leader in the development of responsible AI, Cornell Bowers CIS is in a unique position to guide tomorrow’s innovators as they delve deeper into questions of ethics, equity, and privacy, while weighing the policy implications of technological advances. World-class research, collaboration and education are in the DNA of Cornell Bowers CIS. Founded decades ahead of its time in 1999, Cornell Bowers CIS was one of the first academic entities to foresee the coming technological era and organize to meet it collaboratively, drawing on expertise of pioneers in each of its three departments – IT, information. science and statistics and data science.