Tech Policy Lab

I am so damn excited to share my new book, Law and Technology: A Methodical Approach. Full of stories and priced at $40, this book explains why law finds technology so difficult to regulate, and what to do about it. global.oup.com/academic/pro...

A Common Pool of Privacy Problems: Legal and Technical Lessons from a Large-Scale Web-Scraped Machine Learning Dataset We investigate the contents of web-scraped data for training AI systems, at sizes where human dataset curators and compilers no longer manually annotate every sample. Building off of prior privacy con...

🪩 For more results and in-depth discussion, please check out our paper with the incredible @jevan.bsky.social @willie-agnew.bsky.social @imaadhuda @yoshikohno.bsky.social @jamiemmt.bsky.social @techpolicylab.bsky.social at arxiv.org/abs/2506.17185 (14/14)

A Common Pool of Privacy Problems: Legal and Technical Lessons from a Large-Scale Web-Scraped Machine Learning Dataset We investigate the contents of web-scraped data for training AI systems, at sizes where human dataset curators and compilers no longer manually annotate every sample. Building off of prior privacy con...

New paper alert! In a collaboration between computer scientists and legal scholars, we find a significant amount of PII in a common AI training dataset and conduct a legal analysis showing that these issues put web-scale datasets in tension with existing privacy law. [🧵1/N] arxiv.org/abs/2506.17185

Anti-hacking laws and security standards assume the attacker is trying to bypass a security protocol. AI can get tricked instead. We wrote about this in 2018. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Michael News! I will be joining the Tech Policy Lab at the University of Washington @ischool.uw.edu and UW NLP working with @aylincaliskan.bsky.social as a postdoc in the fall, to work on situated evaluation, multimodal/lingual/cultural genAI, and new directions in safety, fairness, and alignment!

Intrinsic Bias is Predicted by Pretraining Data and Correlates with Downstream Performance in Vision-Language Encoders Kshitish Ghate, Isaac Slaughter, Kyra Wilson, Mona T. Diab, Aylin Caliskan. Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ...

🔗 Paper: aclanthology.org/2025.naacl-l...

Work done with amazing collaborators
@isaacslaughter.bsky.social,
@kyrawilson.bsky.social, @aylincaliskan.bsky.social, and @monadiab77.bsky.social!

Catch our Oral presentation at Ballroom B, Thursday, May 1st, 14:00-15:30 pm!📷✨

Gender, race, and intersectional bias in AI resume screening via language model retrieval Kyra Wilson and Aylin Caliskan examine gender, race, and intersectional bias in AI resume screening and suggest protective policies.

🗞️ Hot off the press! 🗞️
@aylincaliskan.bsky.social and I wrote a blog post about how to make resume screening with AI more equitable based findings from our work presented at AIES in 2024. Major takeaways ⬇️ (1/6)

www.brookings.edu/articles/gen...

Co-Director @rcalo.bsky.social discusses the importance of not being left in the dark and the ability to make change.

I'm really proud of the institutions we've built up at the University of Washington to address the role of technology in society.
Center for an Informed Public www.cip.uw.edu
Tech Policy Lab techpolicylab.uw.edu
Society + Technology depts.washington.edu/societytech/...
Learn more 👆

The @techpolicylab.bsky.social is celebrating 10 years on Monday, May 5th! The event is open to all past and current members of the Tech Policy Lab. We were able to secure a special rate on rooms at the Graduate: book.passkey.com/e/51006789.

More info- techpolicylab.uw.edu/events/event...

Thank you @alondra.bsky.social for a wonderful Distinguished Lecture and important conversations with our students and faculty!

We love our interns! They've been tabling all week promoting TONIGHT's Distinguished Lecture with @alondra.bsky.social! Hope to see you at 7:00!

Our Distinguished Lecture with @alondra.bsky.social is TODAY! 7:00 PM on the @uofwa.bsky.social campus in Kane Hall. You can still register today at techpolicylab.uw.edu/events/event....

Sorry, we are not live streaming it.

Our Distinguished Lecture with @alondra.bsky.social is tomorrow! Register today! Come check out the Cherry Trees while you are on campus.

Register here: techpolicylab.uw.edu/events/event...

Recognizing the (un)Hidden Figures in AI The AI Equity Lab highlights leading voices and figures in artificial intelligence in recognition of Women's History Month.

Co-Director @aylincaliskan.bsky.social and Faculty Associate @emilymbender.bsky.social were recognized by @brookings.edu for being an important (un)Hidden Figures in AI.

www.brookings.edu/articles/rec...

Sorry, it is not.

Our Distinguished Lecture with @alondra.bsky.social is this week! Please register today!

techpolicylab.uw.edu/events/event...

We are only one week away from our Distinguished Lecture w/ Alondra Nelson (@alondra.bsky.social)!

Algorithmic Agnotology: On AI, Ignorance, and Power

Please join us Thursday, April 3rd at 7:00 PM on the @uofwa.bsky.social campus!

For more info & to register: techpolicylab.uw.edu/events/event...

TPL Co-Director @rcalo.bsky.social comments in @politico.com on where things current stand regarding TikTok in the US.

Look who is on the @uofwa.bsky.social homepage! It is great to see TPL Co-Director @aylincaliskan.bsky.social's work being highlighted! @uwnews.bsky.social @ischool.uw.edu

ischool.uw.edu/news/2024/09...

An image of the event flyer with a picture of Alondra Nelson on the right side

The @techpolicylab.bsky.social is hosting Alondra Nelson for their Distinguished Lecture on April 3rd at 7 p.m. PT!

This event is free and open to the public. Register here: bit.ly/4c1HqkI

We are only two weeks away! Register today!

You can now RSVP for the Tech Policy Lab Distinguished Lecture with Alondra Nelson (@alondra.bsky.social)! It is taking place the evening of Thursday, April 3rd at 7:00 on the @uofwa.bsky.social campus.

For more information, please visit techpolicylab.uw.edu/events/event...

We Robot Conference 2025

One of the more hopeful things I have the privilege of doing right now is organizing to bring wonderful people together from across multiple continents to talk critically about the intersection of law and robots (and AI).

Register now. Just over 3 weeks until We Robot 2025!! www.werobot2025.ca

Online bullying isn't new, but it's evolving UW professor Ryan Calo tells KUOW’s Kim Malcolm about the new powers behind the bully pulpit.

Co-Director @rcalo.bsky.social was recently interviewed by @kuow.org where he explained the chilling of speech, "jawboning," internet trolls, and the evolution of online bullying.

m.kuow.org/stories/onli...

Congress used to evaluate emerging technologies. Let’s do it again. A look back at the Office of Technology Assessment, the Congressional think tank that detected lies and tested tech.

In and interview with @technologyreview.com, Co-Director @rcalo.bsky.social argues that the Office of Technology Assessment should be resurrected.

www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/19/1...

This is @kaimingcheng.bsky.social at his great talk on "User Comprehension and Comfort with Eye-Tracking and Hand-Tracking Permissions in Augmented Reality" at USEC earlier this week. Nice work!! 🎉 Check out the paper at www.ndss-symposium.org/wp-content/u....

The Ethics of AI with Batya Friedman & Steve Omohundro - StarTalk Special Edition Can we ensure technology evolves ethically? Neil Tyson, Chuck Nice & Gary O’Reilly explore the future, ethics, & AI w/ Batya Friedman & Steve Omohundro

As a part of TPL Co-Founder Batya Friedman's @futureoflife.org Future of Life Award, she joined @neildegrassetyson.com, @chucknicecomic.bsky.social, & Gary O'Reilly to discuss her work on Value Sensitive Design and the Ethics of AI on an episode of Start Talk.

startalkmedia.com/show/the-eth...

Congratulations, Rachel!