Combatting Disinformation One Month from the Election:
What State and Local Policy Makers Can Do
Carnegie Mellon University is pleased to present a virtual artificial intelligence (AI) roundtable in partnership with the Block Center for Technology and Society and the Center for Informed Democracy and Social cyber-Security (IDeaS).
With the 2020 presidential election approaching, disinformation campaigns aimed at creating confusion, spreading falsehoods and increasing hostility between voters threaten U.S. democracy. Yet there is a worrying trend of disinformation groups beginning to go beyond the presidential election to target state and local governments, which often are ill-prepared to identify and respond.
Tuesday, October 6, 2020 | 12–1:30 p.m. | ET
A recording of this roundtable can be viewed below
Moderator
Executive Director, Block Center for Technology and Society
Carnegie Mellon University
Scott Andes is the Executive Director of the Block Center for Technology and Society
Previously, he led the City Innovation Ecosystem Program at the National League of Cities. The program supported over 100 mayors to create and bolster local innovation and entrepreneurship policies. Prior to NLC, Scott was a Fellow at the Brookings Institution where his research focused on innovation-based economic development and science and technology policy. Scott’s research has been cited in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, NPR, and others. He was also an analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Scott has worked on numerous national political campaigns and was Special Assistant to U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer. He CMU Alumni, with a Masters in Public Policy and Management (MSPPM) from Heinz College and B.S. from the London School of Economics.
Speakers
Assistant Professor, Language Technologies Institute
School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Yonatan Bisk is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at CMU with a primary research focus on natural language processing for grounding either in visual perception or robotic control. His research focus is on the gap between the knowledge captured by models from text alone and the richness of meaning accessible to humans via perception and interaction. He did his PhD work at UIUC on Bayesian models for unsupervised syntax, after which he spent time at USC's Information Sciences Institute with Daniel Marcu, the University of Washington with Yejin Choi, and Microsoft Research with Jianfeng Gao.
Professor, Software and Societal Systems Department
Director, Center for Informed Democracy & Social cybersecurity (IDeaS)
School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Professor Carley specializes in network science, agent-based modeling, and text-mining within a complex socio-technical system, organizational and social theory framework. In her work, she examines how cognitive, social and institutional factors come together to impact individual, organizational and societal outcomes. Using this lens she has addressed a number of policy issues including counter-terrorism, human and narcotic trafficking, cyber and nuclear threat, organizational resilience and design, natural disaster preparedness, cyber threat in social media, and leadership. She has written 4 books, edited 2 books, been on 10 NRC panels resulting in monographs, and published over 430 journal articles and chapters. She is the recipient of the lifetime achievement award in Mathematical Sociology, the Simmel award in Social Networks from the International Network for Social Network Analysis, and the Allen Newell Award for Research Excellence - “For the creation of empirical methods to rigorously establish the impact of human communication on software quality.” She is a member of the IEEE, ACM, ASA, the Academy of Management and INSNA. She has served as a task force member of the Defense Science Board and committee member on the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology. She is the developer of the ORA software for network analytics and visualization that is widely used in academics, organizations and government.
In 2020, Professor Carley created a new research center dedicated to the study of online disinformation and its effects on democracy. IDeaS, funded by a $5 million investment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The new center brings together researchers from within CMU and across the country.
Vice President, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation & Director, Center for Data Innovation
Daniel Castro is vice president at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) and director of ITIF's Center for Data Innovation.
Castro writes and speaks on a variety of issues related to information technology and internet policy, including privacy, security, intellectual property, Internet governance, e-government, and accessibility for people with disabilities. His work has been quoted and cited in numerous media outlets, including The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, USA Today, Bloomberg News, and Bloomberg Businessweek. In 2013, Castro was named to FedScoop’s list of the “top 25 most influential people under 40 in government and tech.” In 2015, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker appointed Castro to the Commerce Data Advisory Council.
Castro previously worked as an IT analyst at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) where he audited IT security and management controls at various government agencies. He contributed to GAO reports on the state of information security at a variety of federal agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. In addition, Castro was a visiting scientist at the Software Engineering Institute in Pittsburgh, PA, where he developed virtual training simulations to provide clients with hands-on training of the latest information security tools.
He has a B.S. in foreign service from Georgetown University and an M.S. in information security technology and management from Carnegie Mellon University.
Senior Fellow, Governance Studies
Director, Center for Technology Innovation
Brookings Institution
Dr. Nicol Turner Lee is a senior fellow in Governance Studies, the director of the Center for Technology Innovation, and serves as Co-Editor-In-Chief of TechTank. Dr. Turner Lee researches public policy designed to enable equitable access to technology across the U.S. and to harness its power to create change in communities across the world. Her work also explores global and domestic broadband deployment and internet governance issues. She is an expert on the intersection of race, wealth, and technology within the context of civic engagement, criminal justice, and economic development.
Dr. Turner Lee comes to Brookings from the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC), a national non-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting and preserving equal opportunity and civil rights in the mass media, telecommunications, and broadband industries, where she served as vice president and chief research and policy officer. In this role, she led the design and implementation of their research, policy and advocacy agendas.
Prior to joining MMTC, Dr. Turner Lee was vice president and the first director of the Media and Technology Institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the nation’s leading think tank on issues related to African Americans and other people of color. In this role, she led the technology research agenda that was focused on advancing digital equity and inclusion for historically disadvantaged populations. Her most notable work was her development of the first national minority broadband adoption study in 2009 that was later cited in the congressionally mandated Federal Communications Commission’s National Broadband Plan.
Dr. Turner Lee’s most recent publications address biases in machine learning algorithms, the digital divide, 5G mobile infrastructure and telehealth. She has written extensively on the digital divide in both urban and rural areas, and the availability of local health resources, including those enabled through telemedicine. She has a forthcoming book on the topic, Digitally Invisible: How the Internet is Creating the New Underclass (Brookings Press, 2021).
Dr. Turner Lee has been cited in the New York Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Communications Daily, Multichannel News, and Washington Informer. She can also be seen or heard on NPR, NBC News, ABC and other print and online publications. She is also a widely sought expert and speaker on issues related to communications policies in media and at conferences, and she has testified on multiple occasions before Congress. Dr. Turner Lee was a two-time Digital Research Program Scholar as part of Time Warner Cable’s Cable Research Program in Communications and recipient of countless recognitions, including the presentation of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rainbow PUSH Coalition (2015 and 2019) and one of the Most Inspiring Women in Media from the Alliance of Women in Media (2014).
Dr. Turner Lee graduated from Colgate University magna cum laude and has a M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University. She also holds a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from the University of Illinois-Chicago. Dr. Turner-Lee is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Gender Equity in Science and Technology at Arizona State University. She also serves on the Federal Communications Commission broadband advisory working group and digital diversity working group. In her free time, Dr. Turner Lee is Chair of the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC), which is committed to joining policymakers and academics around significant tech policy issues.