Join the Cyber Policy Center October 29th, from 1 PM-2 PM, for the next seminar in our Fall Seminar Series. Sessions will run October through December and will be moderated by Nate Persily, co-director of the CPC. We will hear from the U.S. AI Safety Institute’s (U.S. AISI) inaugural director, Elizabeth Kelly, who will discuss: (1) how the U.S. government is approaching AI safety; (2) how they are working with international counterparts, as well as stakeholders in civil society, academia, and industry; and (3) why they believe a focus on safety is essential to future AI innovation. Ms. Kelly will also reflect on the progress made in the year since President Biden signed the Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.

Please note, this seminar has no zoom option and is in-person only. Register for your spot.

About the Speaker

Elizabeth Kelly is director of the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute. As director, she is responsible for providing executive leadership, management, and oversight of the AI Safety Institute and coordinating with other AI policy and technical initiatives throughout the Department of Commerce, NIST and across the government.

Prior to joining NIST, Elizabeth served as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy at the White House National Economic Council, where she helped lead the Administration's efforts on financial regulation and technology policy, including artificial intelligence. Elizabeth was a driving force behind the domestic components of the AI executive order, spearheading efforts to promote competition, protect privacy, and support workers and consumer, and helped lead Administration engagement with allies and partners on AI governance.

She previously served as a senior policy advisor on the Biden-Harris Transition Team and in the Obama White House. In the private sector, Elizabeth was Senior Vice President of Growth for Capital One Investing, which acquired United Income, a fintech start-up that she helped grow as SVP of Operations.

Elizabeth holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, an MSc in Comparative Social Policy from the University of Oxford, and a B.A. from Duke University. She is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Join the Cyber Policy Center November 12th, from 1 PM-2 PM, for Large Legal Fictions: Assessing the Reliability of AI in Legal Research, a seminar with Daniel E. Ho, moderated by Nate Persily. Stanford affiliates are invited to join us at 12:40 PM for lunch, prior to the seminar.

About the Seminar

Legal practice has witnessed a sharp rise in products incorporating artificial intelligence (AI). Such tools are designed to assist with a wide range of core legal tasks, from search and summarization of case law to document drafting. But the large language models used in these tools are prone to “hallucinate,” or make up false information, making their use risky in high-stakes domains. This talk will discuss recent efforts to profile hallucinations in such tools. 

About the Speaker

Daniel E. Ho is the William Benjamin Scott and Luna M. Scott Professor of Law, Professor of Political Science, Professor of Computer Science (by courtesy), Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University. He is a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and is Director of the Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab (RegLab). Ho serves on the National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee (NAIAC), advising the White House on artificial intelligence, as Senior Advisor on Responsible AI at the U.S. Department of Labor, and as a Public Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS). He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School and Ph.D. from Harvard University and clerked for Judge Stephen F. Williams on the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.

Join the Cyber Policy Center October 22nd, from 1 PM-2 PM, for the next seminar in our Fall Seminar Series. Sessions will run October through December and will be moderated by Nate Persily, co-director of the CPC. Hiroki Habuka, Research Professor at the Graduate School of Law, Kyoto University, and the CEO of Smart Governance, and Tatsuhiko Inatani, Professor at Kyoto University Graduate School of Law, joins us for their talk Japan's Approach to AI Governance: Shaping a Future of AI-Human Interaction.

Stanford affiliates are invited to join us at 12:40 PM for lunch, prior to the seminar. Please note the change in time this fall.

About the Seminar

As the implementation of AI technology rapidly advances across all sectors, countries around the world are developing regulations and standards for AI governance. In 2024, the European Union enacted a comprehensive AI Act, and other regions, such as California, New York, the United Kingdom, and China, have either established or are actively debating AI regulatory frameworks.

In this global landscape, Japan has consistently demonstrated its commitment to establishing rules that promote the development and utilization of AI. This stance is shaped by Japan's societal needs, such as addressing labor shortages due to an aging population, and a cultural background that has long embraced the idea of human-robot coexistence through mediums like manga and anime. Instead of perceiving AI as a threat to humanity, Japan focuses on how AI can enhance human well-being through human-AI interaction. A key question is how to update our governance model to materialize the rule of law to maximize the positive impact of AI while mitigating the risks acceptable to the society. To address this, Japan has advocated for an agile, multi-stakeholder governance model and has proactively implemented various legal reforms to welcome AI into society. Moreover, as the G7 chair in 2023, Japan launched the Hiroshima AI Process, leading the efforts to establish international norms for AI governance. Today, the Hiroshima AI Process stands as a major international AI governance framework, with the support of over 50 countries and regions

In this seminar, professors from Kyoto University, who have played a pivotal role in shaping Japan’s AI policy, will explain Japan's approach to AI governance and introduce cutting-edge research on the legal frameworks surrounding human-robot interaction. The discussion will also explore how Japan's insights can contribute to the development of global AI governance.

About the Speakers

Hiroki Habuka is a Research Professor at the Graduate School of Law, Kyoto University, and the CEO of Smart Governance. He specializes in agile governance, a multi-stakeholder and distributed governance model that integrates regulation, corporate governance, and system risk management, particularly in the field of AI. In addition to his research on agile governance, he serves as an expert advisor to the government and as a director of the AI Governance Association. In 2020, the World Economic Forum's Global Future Councils on Agile Governance and Apolitical named him one of the World’s 50 Most Influential People Revolutionising Government (Agile 50). Hiroki holds a Master’s degree in Law (LL.M., Fulbright Fellow) from Stanford Law School, a Juris Doctor from the University of Tokyo Law School, and is qualified to practice law in Japan and New York State. He is an author of the book "Introduction to AI Governance: From Risk Management to Social Design." (2023, Hayakawa Books)

Tatsuhiko Inatani is a professor at Kyoto University Graduate School of Law. He specializes in criminal law (criminology and criminal policy) and law and technology. In particular, his research focuses on corporate crime and the legal governance of advanced science and technology. He employs a research methodology based on an interdisciplinary approach, applying knowledge from adjacent fields such as philosophy, cognitive science, and economics. He is also the PI of the research team on Artificial Intelligence and Law at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies on Law and Policy, Kyoto University. He is also a visiting researcher at RIKEN AIP. He has served on various committees of METI, Digital Agency, IPA-DADC, WEF, etc., and has conducted joint research with several companies and with several foreign universities.

Join the Cyber Policy Center October 15th, from 1 PM-2 PM, for the next seminar in our Fall Seminar Series. Sessions will run October through December and will be moderated by Nate Persily, co-director of the CPC. Tiziano Piccardi, postdoctoral scholar in the Stanford Human-Computer Interaction Group (HCI), joins us for his talk Tuning Our Algorithmic Amplifiers: Designing Pro-Social Values Into Social Media Algorithms.

Stanford affiliates are invited to join us at 12:40 PM for lunch, prior to the seminar. Please note the change in time this fall.

About the Seminar

Can we design feed algorithms that are mindful of their societal impact? AI-driven feed algorithms typically optimize for user engagement and retention but may inadvertently contribute to harmful outcomes, such as affective polarization. Recent interventions aimed at mitigating these effects have produced mixed and sometimes contradictory results. However, advancements in AI now offer an opportunity to rethink how algorithmic curation is done by embedding important societal values—such as supporting democratic principles—directly into the objectives of feed algorithms. In this presentation, we showcase the benefits of this approach through a field experiment on X (formerly Twitter). Using a browser extension powered by large language models (LLMs), we re-rank users' feeds in real time, controlling exposure to posts that express political distrust and animosity. Our findings demonstrate that this intervention influences users' feelings toward individuals from opposing political parties, highlighting a potential pathway for designing feed algorithms that explicitly promote societal values like democracy.

About the Speaker

Tiziano Piccardi is a postdoctoral scholar in the HCI group at Stanford University. His research focuses on the societal impact of AI-driven social media systems, with particular attention to issues such as political polarization. His work explores alternative designs for social media platforms that prioritize positive societal outcomes and reduce harmful effects. He earned his PhD in data science from EPFL in Switzerland, where his work centered on understanding Wikipedia's role in information-seeking behavior and designing solutions to improve the platform. As a formal, long-term collaborator with Wikimedia Research, he contributed to understanding how Wikipedia is used globally and how it can be improved. Tiziano is a Swiss National Science Foundation fellow.

Join the Cyber Policy Center October 8th, from 1 PM-2 PM, for the next seminar in our Fall Seminar Series. Sessions will run October through December and will be moderated by Nate Persily, co-director of the CPC. Samantha Bradshaw, Director of the Center for Security, Innovation, and New Technology at American University and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Foreign Policy & Global Security, joins us for her talk Exporting Autocracy: How Foreign Influence Operations Shape Attitudes About Democracy.

 Stanford affiliates are invited to join us at 12:40 PM for lunch, prior to the seminar. Please note the change in time this fall.

About the Seminar

Recent studies indicate that nearly all democratic gains achieved over the past 35 years had eroded by 2022, coinciding with a dramatic rise in disinformation campaigns. While some scholars argue that FIOs have played a crucial role in this democratic decline, others dispute the evidence of such backsliding or suggest that these information campaigns have minimal political impact. Through an analysis of democratic sentiments across 15 African nations from 2009 to 2023, Dr. Bradshaw will present compelling evidence about the impact of FIOs on democratic attitudes, demonstrating that regular exposure to FIOs significantly undermines support for democratic norms, particularly in relation to increased Russian activity.

About the Speaker

Dr. Samantha Bradshaw is the Director of the Center for Security, Innovation, and New Technology at American University and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Foreign Policy & Global Security. She also currently holds a Lightning Scholar Fellowship at Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research examines issues around emerging technology, democracy, and security, including disinformation and foreign influence operations. Dr. Bradshaw obtained her D.Phil. from Oxford University in 2020 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University between 2020-2022.
 

Join the Cyber Policy Center October 1st, from 1 PM-2 PM, for the kick-off of our Fall Seminar Series. Sessions will run October through December and will be moderated by Nate Persily, co-director of the CPC. Our first seminar features Daphne Keller, Director of the Program on Platform Regulation, for her talk, The Supreme Court and Internet Platforms. Stanford affiliates are invited to join us at 12:40 PM for lunch, prior to the seminar.

About the Seminar

The Supreme Court issued major new rulings about platforms and online speech in 2023 and 2024. That trend will continue in 2025. Keller will review the recent cases and their implications, and preview coming ones. Past cases include the Gonzalez and Taamneh rulings about platform liability for ISIS activity, as well as the Moody ruling about so-called "must-carry" laws in Texas and Florida. Pending cases include at minimum a highly consequential First Amendment case about age verification mandates and adults' First Amendment rights to read online material without compromising their privacy and protection from surveillance, Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. The Court could also, potentially agree to hear a case about algorithmic ranking and platforms' immunities under Section 230, as well as a case about platform transparency mandates. The webinar will take place every Tuesday, starting October 1st from 1 PM - 2 PM Pacific Time and lunch will be served to Stanford affiliates. Please arrive 5 - 10 minutes before 1:00 pm to allow yourself time to grab lunch and get situated in the room prior to the event starting.

About Daphne Keller

Daphne Keller's work focuses on platform regulation and Internet users' rights. She has testified before legislatures, courts, and regulatory bodies around the world, and published both academically and in popular press on topics including platform content moderation practices, constitutional and human rights law, copyright, data protection, and national courts' global takedown orders. Her recent work focuses on legal protections for users’ free expression rights when state and private power intersect, particularly through platforms’ enforcement of Terms of Service or use of algorithmic ranking and recommendations. Until 2020, Daphne was the Director of Intermediary Liability at Stanford's Center for Internet and Society. She also served until 2015 as Associate General Counsel for Google, where she had primary responsibility for the company’s search products. Daphne has taught Internet law at Stanford, Berkeley, and Duke law schools. She is a graduate of Yale Law School, Brown University, and Head Start.

The European Parliament elections that took place last June, recent legislative elections in France and other EU member states, and regional elections in Germany, have led to big gains for far-right parties throughout Europe. In this talk we discuss the recent election results and their implications for democracy in Europe. Will we witness a rightward shift in EU and member state policies, in such policy areas as immigration and the environment? Will the rise of the far right enable it to slow down or even bring to a halt EU policy-making and further integration? Will more member states follow Hungary's path and move away from democracy toward authoritarianism? 

Christophe Crombez is a political economist who specializes in European Union (EU) politics and business-government relations in Europe. His research focuses on EU institutions and their impact on policies, EU institutional reform, lobbying, party politics, and parliamentary government.

Crombez is Senior Research Scholar at The Europe Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University (since 1999). He is also Professor of Political Economy at the Faculty of Economics and Business at KU Leuven in Belgium (since 1994). Crombez obtained a B.A. in Applied Economics, Finance, from KU Leuven, and a Ph.D. in Business, Political Economics, from Stanford University.

*If you need any disability-related accommodation, please contact Shannon Johnson at sj1874@stanford.edu. Requests should be made by September 29, 2024.