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Archive

Advancing technological intelligence to improve the human-technology relationship

Updates on our work

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  • December 6-7 - The Neely Center’s Managing Director, Ravi Iyer, presented a talk on how AI powered social media systems are affecting mental and physical health at Stanford University’s AI+Health Conference held on December 6-7, 2023. The audience, which included medical practitioners from a wide range of institutions, was eager to understand how AI is likely to impact their professional work.  In his talk, Ravi discussed how systems could be designed to improve mental health and reduce health misinformation.

  • December 1- 3 - Organized by How to Build Up Inc., the Build Peace Conference aims to explore emergent challenges to peace in the digital era and introduces peacebuilding innovations to address these issues. The conference served as an interdisciplinary forum for addressing critical topics and transformative practices in peace, conflict, and innovation. The USC Marshall Neely Center for Ethical Leadership and Decision Making is pleased to serve as a sponsor of the Build Peace 2023 conference, which took place in Kenya from December 1 - 3. On Day 1 of the conference, the Neely Center hosted a workshop on “Risks and Benefits of AI for a Global Community”.

  • December - The Neely Center is excited to share the "Blueprint for Action" by the Convergence Collaborative on Digital Discourse, featuring contributions from our Managing Director Ravi Iyer. The digital environment can be fertile ground for disinformation and misinformation, psychological and behavioral manipulation, polarization, radicalization, surveillance, and addiction. As we kick off 2024, a pivotal election year for many countries around the world, this report offers timely strategies for enhancing digital discourse and strengthening democracy, including a resource such as the Design Code for Social Media proposed by the Neely Center. 

  • November 19 - Stanford University’s McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society hosted a conference on November 19, 2023, entitled Beyond Moderation 2023 that brought together academics and organizations interested in exploring how society could get beyond moderation to improve technology's impact on society. At the event, Ravi Iyer introduced the Neely Center's Design Code for Social Media in making an argument that society has a meaningful role to play in designing better technological systems.

  • November 1 - In this Time magazine op-ed, Ravi Iyer, the Managing Director of Neely Center, highlights how challenges in moderating content will always be present when dealing with conflict, including the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas. Leveraging the Neely Center's Design Code for Social Media, he presents a case for improving the design of online platforms as a timely alternative to attempting to adjudicate what people should and should not be able to say online.

  • October 29 - The Tech Policy Press' Sunday Show podcast hosted Ravi Iyer, the Neely Center Managing Director, to discuss the recently released Neely Center’s Design Code for Social Media. The podcast is widely listened to amongst those working on technology policy. In the podcast, Ravi discussed the specifics of the Design Code and how it advances current efforts to improve the impact of social media on youth.

  • October 10 - The 2nd Annual Metaverse Summit: Building Connections and Communities through Mixed Reality is took place on October 10, 2023, in Los Angeles. The summit featured Nathanael Fast, Director of the Neely Center, as a speaker. His panel focused on "Moving at the Speed of Innovation: How Can Policy Keep Up?".

  • September 28-29 - Hosted at Stanford University, the Trust and Safety Research Conference is taking place on September 28-29, 2023. The event brought together a cross-disciplinary group of academics and researchers from computer science, sociology, law, and political science to connect with practitioners and policymakers on challenges and new ideas for studying and addressing online trust and safety issues. Both our Director, Nathanael Fast, and Managing Director, Ravi Iyer, presented there, so keep an eye out.

  • September 27-29 - The Global Big Data Conference took place on September 27-29, 2023. This virtual event focused on artificial intelligence (AI). Neely Center's Managing Director, Ravi Iyer, presented at the keynote panel on Day 1 about Generative AI: Balancing Innovation and Responsibility.

  • September 26 - Ravi Iyer, Managing Director of the Neely Center for Ethical Leadership and Decision Making, was the inaugural speaker for the Pro-Social series on September 26, 2023. At the event, Ravi presented the Center's "Design Code for Social Media.” The talk series is organized by the ProSocial Design Network (PDN).

  • August 2 - What Can We Learn from the First Studies of Facebook’s and Instagram’s Roles in the US 2020 Election? Co-written by Ravi Iyer, Managing Director of the USC Marshall School’s Neely Center for Ethical Leadership and Decision Making, and Juliana Schroeder, professor at the UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, this Tech Policy Press article discusses four studies on Facebook and Instagram's role in the US 2020 election, indicating that optimizing for engagement can incentivize divisive content and potentially lead to polarization. It also highlights that chronological feeds may not improve social media, and surveys of stable attitudes don't always respond to short-term changes. Additionally, optimizing for reshares can increase views of divisive content. The need to examine the long-term effects on vulnerable users, publishers, and politicians is emphasized.

  • July 19 - How User Experience Metrics complement "Content that Requires Enforcement": On July 19, 2023, a Bloomberg article leveraged the Neely Social Media Index to examine an emerging trend on Twitter— a surge in harmful posts potentially undermining advertiser trust and revenue. Twitter CEO, Linda Yaccarino, rebutted the assertions, labeling the cited data as incorrect, misleading, and outdated. The USC Marshall Neely Center for Ethical Leadership and Decision Making addressed these concerns in this Substack post, articulating the complexity of the issue and sharing  details of the research design employed by the Center to derive the cited data points.

  • July 19 - Twitter’s Surge in Harmful Content a Barrier to Advertiser Return: This Bloomberg article delved into the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk and subsequent policy changes that have allegedly led to an increase in harmful posts, negatively impacting advertiser confidence and revenue. In their discussion, the authors drew from the findings of the USC Marshall Neely Social Media Index data that shows that 30% of U.S. adults that used Twitter between March and May 2023, reported seeing content they consider bad for the world. The article has since been reprinted in Time and the Financial Post.

  • July 17 - Efforts to Rein In AI Tap Lesson From Social Media: Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late: This Wall Street Journal article, Ravi Iyer, Managing Director of the USC Marshall Neely Center for Ethical Leadership and Decision Making, shares about the recently launched Neely Artificial Intelligence (AI) Index that tracks how people experience interactions with AI systems. The Neely Center strives to shape AI product design and deployment by advocating for rewarding platforms that make ethically sound design choices.

  • July 11 - How Tech Regulation Can Leverage Product Experimentation Results: Cowritten by Ravi Iyer, Managing Director of the USC Marshall Neely Center for Ethical Leadership and Decision Making, and Nathaniel Lubin, this Lawfare article emphasizes the need for transparency in technology regulation, particularly concerning the experimental results that tech companies use for product decisions. The authors propose a system where product experiment records and their impact on decisions and goals are shared with approved third-party reviewers and published on a regulated timeline, ensuring scrutiny while respecting business innovation and user privacy.

  • June 23 - Plurality Institute’s Spring Symposium: Bridging the Divide: On June 23, 2023, the Plurality Institute organized their Spring Symposium: Bridging the Divide. This live streamed event delved deep into exploring the theme of “bridging” during a time of increasing polarization. At the symposium,  Ravi Iyer, Managing Director of the USC Marshall Neely Center for Ethical Leadership and Decision Making, underscored the value of diversity in improving algorithms.

  • June 21 - 3. Themes: The Most Harmful or Menacing Changes in Digital Life that are Likely by 2035: In this Pew article, Ravi Iyer, Managing Director of the USC Marshall Neely Center for Ethical Leadership and Decision Making, speculated on a scenario where a rogue state could build autonomous killing machines, with potentially disastrous consequences.

  • June 21 - Why Haidt and Schmidt’s Proposed Social Media Reforms Are Insufficient –  In this After Babel Substack post, Ravi Iyer, Neely Center's Managing Director, casts a critical eye on the effectiveness of content moderation in social media. He posits that rather than being a sustainable remedy, content moderation is more akin to a short-term band-aid. He further proposes that achieving long-term, scalable solutions necessitates a comprehensive redesigning of the core algorithms that power social media platforms.

  • June 16 - AI Is Already Causing Unintended Harm. What Happens When it Falls Into the Wrong Hands? - In this article published in The Guardian, PTI’s senior advisor, David Evan Harris, warns of the potential dangers posed by powerful AI systems, citing the need for stringent controls, regulatory bodies, and legal measures to prevent misuse and ensure AI safety and integrity.

  • June 13 - No One Knows Exactly What Social Media is Doing to Teens - Some research suggests that social media platforms have contributed to an increase in teen depression and suicide attempts over the past decade and a half. This article in The Atlantic features work by two of our PTI collaborators, Jeff Hancock and Angela Lee, including their recent paper that highlights how social media may be more harmful for specific youth who have particular "mindsets". Our recent nationally representative panel on social media experiences includes their measure and we are looking forward to collaborating on platform specific relationships that mirror the results they have found in their work.

  • June 8 - NYC Social Media Summit - Organized by New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan of the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) on June 8, 2023, this high-level summit focused on New York City’s role in addressing potential online threats to the mental health and well-being of young people. Ravi Iyer, Managing Director of the Psychology of Technology Institute at USC Marshall School of Business, addressed the responsibility that lies with social media companies themselves. He suggested that advocating for stricter content moderation policies may not be as effective as advocating for social media companies to design their platforms with the promotion of well-being in mind.

  • May 26 - Tech Layoffs Ravage the Teams That Fight Online Misinformation and Hate Speech - Despite the increasing threats of cyberbullying, misinformation, and potential for the abuse of AI, tech giants, including Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft, have made extensive layoffs in recent months, especially in departments dedicated to trust and safety and AI ethics. In this CNBC article, Ravi Iyer, Neely Center’s Managing Director, remarks that if platforms are not going to invest in reconsidering design choices that have been proven to be harmful, then there is indeed cause for concern.

  • May 23 - 4 Ways AI Safety Efforts Could Learn from Expereince with Social Media - This week we have published an article on how our experiences with social media can inform our efforts to safeguard against any undesirable upshots of generative AI. We also wanted to share a few other press pieces highlighting our work.