Related papers: Quantifying Harm
In previous work with Joost Vennekens I proposed a definition of actual causation that is based on certain plausible principles, thereby allowing the debate on causation to shift away from its heavy focus on examples towards a more…
Treatment effect estimation is a fundamental problem in causal inference. We focus on designing efficient randomized controlled trials, to accurately estimate the effect of some treatment on a population of $n$ individuals. In particular,…
Assessing and managing the impact of large-scale epidemics considering only the individual risk and severity of the disease is exceedingly difficult and could be extremely expensive. Economic consequences, infrastructure and service…
The term {\em complexity} is used informally both as a quality and as a quantity. As a quality, complexity has something to do with our ability to understand a system or object -- we understand simple systems, but not complex ones. On…
Causal effects are commonly defined as comparisons of the potential outcomes under treatment and control, but this definition is threatened by the possibility that the treatment or control condition is not well-defined, existing instead in…
Detecting harmful content is a crucial task in the landscape of NLP applications for Social Good, with hate speech being one of its most dangerous forms. But what do we mean by hate speech, how can we define it, and how does prompting…
A general notion of information-related complexity applicable to both natural and man-made systems is proposed. The overall approach is to explicitly consider a rational agent performing a certain task with a quantifiable degree of success.…
In this paper, we examine computational approaches for measuring the "fairness" of image tagging systems, finding that they cluster into five distinct categories, each with its own analytic foundation. We also identify a range of normative…
Harmful speech has various forms and it has been plaguing the social media in different ways. If we need to crackdown different degrees of hate speech and abusive behavior amongst it, the classification needs to be based on complex…
Organizations worldwide that rely on data-driven approaches regularly employ forecasting methods to enhance their planning and decision-making processes. While extensive research has examined the harms associated with traditional machine…
Recent studies show that Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies propagate societal biases about demographic groups associated with attributes such as gender, race, and nationality. To create interventions and mitigate these biases…
We axiomatically define a cardinal social inefficiency function, which, given a set of alternatives and individuals' vNM preferences over the alternatives, assigns a unique number -- the social inefficiency -- to each alternative. These…
Case-control designs are an important tool in contrasting the effects of well-defined treatments. In this paper, we reconsider classical concepts, assumptions and principles and explore when the results of case-control studies can be…
Attention capitalism has generated design processes and product development decisions that prioritize platform growth over all other considerations. To the extent limits have been placed on these incentives, interventions have primarily…
When an individual reports a negative interaction with some system, how can their personal experience be contextualized within broader patterns of system behavior? We study the reporting database problem, where individual reports of adverse…
Recent generative AI systems have demonstrated more advanced persuasive capabilities and are increasingly permeating areas of life where they can influence decision-making. Generative AI presents a new risk profile of persuasion due the…
The stochastic system approach to causality is applied to situations where the risk of death is not negligible. This approach grounds causality on physical laws, distinguishes system and observation and represents the system by multivariate…
To evaluate the societal impacts of GenAI requires a model of how social harms emerge from interactions between GenAI, people, and societal structures. Yet a model is rarely explicitly defined in societal impact evaluations, or in the…
This work builds on a rich discourse surrounding the social brain hypothesis as well as the definition and quantification of social complexity. We believe this manuscript provides a new perspective on the topic by pairing a conceptual…
Social interactions in general are multifaceted and there exists a wide set of factors and events that influence them. In this paper, we quantify social interactions with a holistic viewpoint on individual experiences, particularly focusing…