We hope to see you on Zoom (https://aarhusuniversity.zoom.us/j/68750348624) or in room 1586-114 (Kasernen) on September 23 from 12.00. - 13.15 when Helene Friis Ratner will visit us to talk about the project "Algorithms, data and democracy: Predictive algorithms in public sector administration".

About "Algorithms, data and democracy: Predictive algorithms in public sector administration":

Predicting which children will become subject to parental neglect. Predicting which students will drop out of their education. Predicting where crime will take place and who will commit it. Predicting which citizens will become long-term unemployed and predicting who will not pay their taxes.These are all examples of public sector predictive analytics, either in use, under development or under political consideration.

The potentials and promises of these AI techniques are obvious: they help public administration actors tailor and target the citizens most at risk, potentially preventing the risky behaviour through early intervention. However, as the numerous public and political debates around predictive analytics have shown, public administration’s use of these technologies is fraught with data ethical dilemmas. The dilemmas revolve around issues of privacy, register merging, the biases inherent in predictive algorithms as well as fundamental questions about our vision of the relationship between the state and its citizens.

Ratner’s study of predictive algorithms in public sector administration is part of the Algorithms, Data and Democracy research project (www.algoritmer.org), which is financed by the Velux and Villum Foundations. The ADD-project explores how digitalization, datafication and AI are becoming controversial, contributing to society’s crises of trust.

In this talk, Ratner will introduce to the ambitions and scope of the ADD-project as well as invite a discussion about some preliminary ideas and findings from her own subproject on public adminstration’s use of predictive algorithms.

We hope so see many of you there!