The 2022 Social Media Summit@MIT Event Report

2022 SOCIAL MEDIA SUMMIT @ MIT
WHAT’S NEXT FOR
SOCIAL MEDIA?
5 GLOBAL TRENDS TO WATCH IN VOLATILE TIMES

SOCIAL MEDIA SUMMIT @ MIT 2022
A MINEFIELD OF
ONLINE VOLATILITY
The second annual Social Media Summit@MIT focused on the information
war in Ukraine, fake news, the need for greater algorithmic
transparency, and the importance of ethics in artificial intelligence.
“It’s extremely important to keep the conversation going,
and that’s exactly what we intend to do.”
SINAN ARAL
The Social Media Summit@MIT (SMS),
hosted by MIT’s Initiative on the Digital
Economy (IDE), was launched last year in the
midst of unprecedented upheavals sparked
and organized on social media platforms—
including the January 6, 2021, storming of the
U.S. Capitol. And the turmoil didn’t stop there.
In February, former President Donald Trump
launched his own social media platform,
Truth Social, after he was permanently
banned from Twitter and suspended from
Facebook for two years. In another shakeup,
The Wall Street Journal published “The
Facebook Papers,” a damning, multipart
report based on more than 10,000 documents
leaked by a company whistleblower.
We’re less than halfway into 2022, yet already
it’s shaping up to be another pivotal year for
social media, where we are witnessing Russia’s
brutal invasion of Ukraine with both real bombs
and fake news.
All of these developments resonated during
the 2022 SMS event—in particular, in a
conversation between IDE Director Sinan Aral
and the Facebook whistleblower, Frances
Haugen (see details, page 4). Calls for more
transparency from platform companies and
algorithm designers were dominant throughout
the day. Since the event, Twitter became a
takeover target by Elon Musk.
Discussions focused on the pressing
concerns of misinformation amplified by
social media and how to achieve the goals of
AI and algorithmic transparency and ethics.
Panels were led by top MIT researchers—
David Rand, Dean Eckles, and Renée
Richardson Gosline—who, according to
Aral, are engaged in “groundbreaking
research that is making meaningful inroads
into solving the social media crisis.”
The moderators were joined by a diverse
group of academics, social media pros, a
state senator, and others, providing a rich
day of contrasting views and opinions. One
obvious trend is that social media’s clout is
growing, and so is its scrutiny. “It’s extremely
important to keep the conversation going,”
Aral told SMS attendees, “and that’s exactly
what we intend to do.”
03 OVERVIEW
04 FIRESIDE CHAT WITH FRANCES HAUGEN
08 MISINFORMATION AND FAKE NEWS
12 ALGORITHMIC TRANSPARENCY
16 THE INFORMATION WAR IN UKRAINE
20 RESPONSIBLE AI
24 FINAL THOUGHTS & THANKS
Click the play icon throughout
the report to view session videos
On March 31, 2022, MIT’s Initiative on the
Digital Economy (IDE) hosted the second
annual Social Media Summit (SMS@MIT).
The online event, which attracted more
than 12,000 virtual attendees, convened
technology and policy experts to examine
the growing impact of social media on our
democracies, our economies, and our public
health—with a vision to craft meaningful
solutions to the growing social media crisis.
5 GLOBAL TRENDS
1Social
media’s
impact on
child
and adult
psychology2
The threat
of online
misinformation
and
the need
for systemic
solutions
The importance
of
algorithmic
transparency
—and how to
3achieve it
Expansion
of social
media’s
impact on
geopolitics
4and war
The formalization
of AI ethics
standards
and 5training
2
3

FIRESIDE CHAT SOCIAL MEDIA SUMMIT @ MIT 2022
FRANCES HAUGEN
SPEAKS OUT
The Facebook whistleblower says the company must acknowledge its
tremendous impact and become more transparent.
Frances Haugen is a former
Facebook algorithmic product
manager who today is better
known as the company’s chief
whistleblower. She joined Sinan
Aral to discuss Facebook’s
impact on society, how the
company has resisted efforts to
analyze its algorithms, and what
actions it can take in the future.
Haugen, who earned an MBA
from Harvard Business School
and worked as an electrical
engineer and data scientist
before joining Facebook in
2019, said no one intends to
be a whistleblower. “Living with
a secret is really, really hard;
especially when you think that
secret affects people’s health,
their lives, and their well-being,”
she said.
That’s why Haugen said she
left the company in 2021 and
provided more than 10,000
internal documents to The
Wall Street Journal. These
documents became the basis
for the newspaper’s series, “The
Facebook Files.” As the Journal
wrote, “Facebook knows, in acute
detail, that its platform is riddled
Frances
Haugen
provided
more than
10,000
internal
Facebook/
Meta
documents
to the
press.
with flaws that cause harm,
often in ways only the company
fully understands.”
One of Haugen’s biggest
criticisms of Facebook, which
was renamed Meta in 2021,
concerns the way the company
has, in her opinion, conflated
the issues of censorship and
algorithmic reach. Most social
media critics say that algorithms
promote dangerous and extreme
content such as hate speech,
vaccine misinformation, and
poor body image messaging to
young people.
Yet Facebook has been quick
to frame the issue as one of
censorship and free speech—not
its proprietary algorithms, Haugen
said. For example, the remit of the
company’s Oversight Board, of
which Haugen was a member, is
to censor those who don’t comply
with content policies. This charter,
Haugen noted, is deliberately
narrow. “Facebook declined to ever
let us discuss the non-contentbased
ways we could be dealing
with safety problems”–such as
building in some “pause” time
before someone can share a link.
“It sounds like a really small thing,
but it’s the difference of 10% or
15% of [shared] misinformation,”
she said. “That little bit of friction,
giving people a chance to breathe
before they share, has the same
impact as the entire third-party
fact-checking system.”
Aral agreed that there is a gap
“between free speech and
algorithmic reach,” and that
fixing one doesn’t infringe on the
other. He pointed to MIT research
showing that when social-media
users pause long enough to think
critically, they’re less likely to
spread fake news. “It’s a cognitive,
technical solution that has
nothing to do with [free] speech,”
Aral said.
Kids and Social Media
Haugen also described the
disturbing ways social media
and targeted advertising affect
teens and children. For example,
Facebook’s surveys, some
involving as many as 100,000
respondents, found that socialmedia
addiction—euphemistically
known as “problematic use”—is
most common among 14-yearolds.
Yet when The Wall Street
Journal gave Facebook a chance
to respond to these findings, the
company pointed to other surveys
with smaller sample sizes and
different results.
“I can tell you as an algorithm
specialist that these algorithms
concentrate harms...in the form of
vulnerability,” Haugen said. “If you
have a rabbit hole you go down,
they suck you toward that spot.
Algorithms don’t have context.
They don’t know if a topic is good
for you or bad for you. All they
know is that some topics really
draw people in.”
Unfortunately, that often means
more extreme content gets the
most views. “Put in ‘healthy eating’
on Instagram,” she said, “and in the
course of a couple of weeks, you
end up [with content] that glorifies
eating disorders.” (Meta has owned
Instagram since 2012.)
She’d like to see legislation to
keep children under 13 off most
social media platforms. Meta
documents show that 20% of
11-year-olds are on the platform.
She’d also like adults to have
the option to turn off targeted
ads. Similarly, she would like to
see a ban on targeted ads, such
as those for weight loss
supplements aimed at children
and teens under the age of 16.
Haugen also suggested that
Facebook dedicate more resources
to fighting misinformation, fake
news, and hate speech. “We need
flat ad rates,” she said. “Facebook’s
own research has said over and
over again that the shortest path
to a click is hate, is anger. And so
it ends up that angry, polarizing,
divisive ads are five to 10 times
cheaper than compassionate or
empathetic ads.”
“If we want to be safe,” Haugen
concluded, we need to have
open conversations about
these practices and “invest
more on transparency.”
3 WAYS
TO FIX
FACEBOOK
Ban targeted ads to
children under 16
Dedicate more
resources to fight
fake news and hate
speech
Keep kids under 13
off the platform
“Living with a
secret is really,
really hard,
especially when
you think that
secret affects
people's health,
their lives and
their well-being.”
FRANCES HAUGEN
4
5

FIRESIDE CHAT SOCIAL MEDIA SUMMIT @ MIT 2022
6
7

PANEL : MISINFORMATION SOCIAL MEDIA SUMMIT @ MIT 2022
FAKE NEWS,
REAL IMPACT
Is social media to blame for producing
and spreading misinformation—or is it
part of a broader problem?
David Rand Professor, MIT Sloan, MIT IDE group leader
Renée DiResta Research Manager, Stanford Internet Observatory
Rebecca Rausch Massachusetts State Senator
Duncan Watts Professor, University of Pennsylvania
Fake news and misinformation
headlines are rampant: The presidential
election was stolen. Vaccinations kill.
Climate change is a hoax. To what
extent is social media responsible?
That was the critical question raised by
expert panelists in the second session
of SMS@MIT 2022.
The dangers are undoubtedly real,
but Duncan Watts, Stevens University
Professor at the Annenberg School
for Communications at the University
of Pennsylvania, observed that
social media is one small cog in a
larger set of mass media gears. “For
the average American, the fraction
of fake news in their media diet is
extremely low,” he argued.
Research shows that most Americans
still get their news primarily from
television. And of the news they do
consume online, fake news represents
only about 1% of the total. “We need
to look much more broadly than
social media,” Watts said. “We need
to look across all types of platforms
and content” to determine the source
of fake news. Today, there are
interconnected ecosystems—from
online influencers to cable networks
and print media—that all contribute to
amplifying misinformation.
Small Groups, Big Impacts
Fellow panelist Renée DiResta,
research manager at Stanford Internet
Observatory, maintained that even small
groups of people spreading fake news
and misinformation can have outsized
reach and engagement online.
“The literal definition of the word
propaganda means to propagate,
the idea that information must be
propagated,” she said. “And social
media is a phenomenal tool for this,
particularly where small numbers of
people can propagate and achieve
very, very significant reach in a way
that they couldn’t in old broadcast
media environments that were much
more top-down.”
Specifically, DiResta explained
how information goes viral and
echo chambers arise. “Influencers
have an amplification network,
the hyper-partisan media outlet
has an amplification network, until
[misinformation] winds up being
discussed on the nightly news,”
she said. “And it’s a phenomenally
distinct form of creating what is
effectively propaganda...it’s just
this fascinating dynamic that we
see happening with increasing
frequency over the last few years.”
Research upholds the idea that
familiarity with a topic “cues”
our brains for accuracy. In other
words, the more often you hear an
assertion—whether true, false or
neutral—the more likely you are to
believe it, according to moderator
David Rand, MIT professor of
management science and brain
and cognitive sciences, and a
group leader at the IDE.
Healthcare’s Unhealthy Messages
This repetition of false news
is “massively problematic” for
the public, said Massachusetts
State Senator Rebecca Rausch.
As an example, she cited reports
stating that 147 of the leading
anti-vaccination feeds, mainly on
Instagram and YouTube, now have
more than 10 million followers, a
25% increase in just the last year.
“A number of anti-vax leaders
seized the COVID-19 pandemic
as a historic opportunity to
popularize anti-vaccine sentiment,”
Rausch said. One result, she said,
is that vaccination hesitancy is
now rising, even for flu and other
routine shots.
Rausch also cited reports that
say 12 anti-vaccination sources
are responsible for 65% of all
anti-vax content online. Some
people also profit from their
misinformation by selling pills and
other supplements they claim
can act as vaccine alternatives.
Watts agreed that “small groups
of people with extreme points of
view and beliefs can indeed inflict
disproportionate harm on society.”
But, rather than saying, “we’re
all swimming in this sea of
misinformation and there’s some
large average effect that is being
applied to society,” we should be
looking at the broader context,
he said.
Algorithmic Influences
Watts said that people often
seek out certain content by
choice. “It’s not necessarily that
the platform is driving people into
a particular extreme position,”
he said. Evidence based on
YouTube, for example, shows
there is a lot of user demand
driving traffic—people search
for specific content, find it, and
share it widely. Unfortunately,
he said, “It’s shocking to be
confronted with that, but it’s not
necessarily a property of the
social media platform.”
Yet DiResta said we can’t
underestimate algorithmic
influence. “There’s an expression:
‘We shape our systems; thereafter,
they shape us,’” DiResta said.
“We’re seeing the extent to which
the network is shaped by the
platform’s incentives.”
Both DiResta and Rausch believe
some of the solutions rest with
legislation. But Rausch asked at
what point laws can supersede
algorithms that promote fringe
content. “What should we be
changing, if anything?” she asked.
“We are very far from knowing
what policies should be proposed
in terms of changing social
media, like platform behavior,
and regulating it,” said Rand.
“But we really need policy around
transparency and making data
available, breaking down the
walled gardens so people from the
outside can learn more about what
is going on.”
For Watts, solutions are complex:
“We can’t go back to a world where
we don’t have the technology to
communicate in this way...and it’s
not at all clear that you can say,
‘Well, you guys can talk to each
other about cargo bikes [online],
but you can’t talk to each other
about vaccines.’ I don’t deny that
it’s a terrible problem, but I feel
very conflicted about how we think
about solutions.”
FACT CHECK
1 %
of online content
is fake news
12
sources are
responsible for 65%
of anti-vax content
10mil
people follow top
anti-vax news feeds
8
9

PANEL : MISINFORMATION SOCIAL MEDIA SUMMIT @ MIT 2022
10
11

PANEL : TRANSPARENCY
SOCIAL MEDIA SUMMIT @ MIT 2022
SEEING THROUGH
SOCIAL MEDIA
ALGORITHMS
The software that drives social media
is top secret. But given platforms’
huge impact on society, should social
media companies provide greater
algorithmic transparency?
Dean Eckles Assistant Professor, MIT Sloan, MIT IDE group leader
Daphne Keller Director of Platform Regulation, Stanford University
Kartik Hosanagar Professor, The Wharton School
“Simply gaining
access to
social media
algorithms isn’t
the complete
answer.”
DEAN ECKLES
“Algorithmic transparency”
may not be an everyday phrase,
but what’s behind it is simple
enough: Social media platforms,
including Facebook, Twitter,
and YouTube, are having such
a significant impact on society,
researchers should be allowed
to study the software programs
that drive their recommendation
engines, content rankings, feeds
and other processes.
Transparency was a common
theme throughout the day, but
one session at SMS@MIT 2022,
focused entirely on the topic,
digging deep into how the goal
can be achieved, and what the
tradeoffs may be. Panelists
explained that many social
media companies have treated
their software code as a state
secret to date. Access to
proprietary algorithms is granted
to company insiders only—and
that’s a problem in terms of
verifying and testing the platforms
and their content.
“Platforms have too much
control,” said Kartik Hosanagar,
professor of operations,
information, and decisions at The
Wharton School, referring to the
relationship between algorithmic
transparency and user trust.
“Exposing that [information] to
other researchers,” he added, “is
extremely important.”
Complex Interactions
At the same time, simply gaining
access to social media algorithms
isn’t sufficient, said Dean Eckles,
the panel’s moderator and an
associate professor of marketing
at MIT Sloan School. He said his
own research shows “how hard it
is to quantify some of the impacts
of algorithmic ranking,” such as
bias and harm.
Eckles noted that algorithms and
consumers are in a feedback loop.
There is an interdependence of
sorts “because the algorithms
are responding to user choices,
and then users are making
choices based on the algorithm.”
Hosanagar added, “It’s a very
complex interaction. It isn’t
that one particular choice of
algorithm always increases or
always decreases filter bubbles.
It also depends on how users
respond.” The narrative that
algorithms cause the filter bubble
is too simple, he said, adding, “it’s
far more nuanced than that.”
Daphne Keller, director of the
Program on Platform Regulation
at Stanford University’s Cyber
Policy Center, would like to see
more academic research into
how social media platforms
moderate and amplify content
and what sorts of content
control—such as taking down
offensive or false posts—their
terms of service permit.
Unfortunately, “data scientists
inside the platform have all of
this [information],” Keller said.
“Lots of people outside platforms
have really compelling arguments
about the good they can do in the
world if they had that access. But
we have to navigate those really
significant barriers and competing
values.” Opening APIs to other
data scientists—as they are doing
in the EU—would be a helpful start
to more transparency. According
to panelists, less clear is what
data access consumers would
want or use.
Political Power
The panel also discussed the
difficulty of learning the exact
impact of social media on politics.
As Hosanagar—and Frances
Haugen, formerly of Facebook—
pointed out, the public sees
only reports the social media
companies make public. “We don’t
BREAKING
THE CODE
1
Most
2
3
Social
platform
companies continue
to treat their
algorithms as
classified secrets.
Greater access
to social media
algorithms would
allow researchers
to explore
platforms’ impacts
and intentions.
media
companies might
share their
code if offered
incentives.
know about the ones that are not
approved internally,” he explained.
Keller added: “We need to have
researchers and algorithm
experts try to figure out a ranked
list of priorities because we’re not
going to get everything.”
One way forward without stifling
innovation, Eckles suggested,
would be to incentivize social
media firms to share their
internal data with other
researchers. Those incentives
could include public pressure and
the threat of lawsuits. It’s already
happened with Facebook sharing
data with Social Science One,
an independent research
commission formed to study
the effects of social media on
elections—potentially a sign of
good things to come.
12
13

PANEL : TRANSPARENCY SOCIAL MEDIA SUMMIT @ MIT 2022
14
15

PANEL : INFOWARS
SOCIAL MEDIA SUMMIT @ MIT 2022
UKRAINE’S SECOND
BATTLEFIELD:
INFORMATION
While Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine
involves all-too-real soldiers, guns, and
tanks, the two nations are also fighting a
war of information. Their main weapon of
choice? Social media.
Sinan Aral Director, MIT IDE
Clint Watts Distinguished Research Fellow, Foreign Policy Research Institute
Richard Stengel Political Analyst, CNBC
Natalia Levina Professor, NYU Stern School of Business
WAR OF WORDS
In Ukraine, social media
is being enlisted for
grassroots organizing
and assistance.
The most widely used
social media platforms
include Telegram and
TikTok.
Video is the most popular
format for social
media during the war.
There was nothing fake about
Russia’s military assault on
Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Soldiers attacked the country
with guns, tanks, and bombs,
and the war still rages. But
on a second front—a parallel
information war waged via social
media—the most dangerous
weapons were misinformation
and fake news, said IDE director
Sinan Aral as he introduced his
expert panelists.
Without downplaying the severity
of the violence committed
by Russia’s military against
Ukrainian civilians, panelists
considered the implications of
the shadow information war in
Ukraine, as well as how both
sides are using social media to
rally global support and spread
information and disinformation.
Natalia Levina, professor of
information systems at NYU’s
Stern School of Business, who
grew up in Ukraine’s secondlargest
city, Kharkiv, said, “My
day often starts with looking
[online] at what’s going on in
Kharkiv. And every day, I hope the
bombardment of the city is less.”
Russia’s designs on Ukraine
date back to at least 2014, the
year Russia annexed Crimea.
Panelist Richard Stengel, a
CNBC analyst and former U.S.
undersecretary of state, said
that’s also when Russia launched
an early and intense information
war. At the time, Russian
President Vladimir Putin denied
the very existence of the invasion,
even after Russian troops had
crossed the border. Other Russian
propaganda disseminated on
social media and elsewhere
falsely accused Ukrainians of
being antisemitic Nazis.
Eight years later, the situation has
shifted. This time, Stengel said,
Russia’s propaganda on social
media appears “antiquated,”
“clunky,” and “uncreative.” That’s
surprising, he said, since the
Russians follow a strategy stating
that four-fifths of war is not
kinetic but information. “They
have a sophisticated 30,000-foot
view,” Stengel said, but they don’t
seem to be executing it.
Levina was less sanguine,
saying, “it’s unfortunately
premature to say that Ukraine
has won the information war.”
Russia is disseminating its
messages via TikTok and its
own state-run media.
Video, Telegram Rule
TikTok and video have emerged
as top weapons in this new
information war, explained Clint
Watts, a research fellow at the
Foreign Policy Research Institute.
“Video is king now across all
platforms,” he said. “Over the
last decade, video-enabled
social media has become much
more available and ubiquitous…
everybody has a camera.”
Watts added that President
Volodymyr Zelensky, a
former actor, is a good video
communicator. In addition,
Zelensky and his government
have used the power of platforms
to crowdsource a virtual army.
While Ukraine doesn’t have many
physical resources, Watts said, it
has a “worldwide audience that
wants to help,” including people
to fight, provide materials and
donate through cryptocurrencies,
and more. “A decade ago, we
were talking about Twitter as
the distribution platform,” Watts
added. “The information battle
today is on Telegram.”
At the same time, false videos
are proliferating in Russia and in
China—the latter, home of TikTok.
As Aral noted, the messaging app
Telegram, which is widely
used in both Ukraine and
Russia, is owned by a Russian
who opposes moderating or
removing disinformation from
Russia or elsewhere.
“There is a ton to learn from
what’s happening right now
that would be instructive for
democracies,” Watts said.
“All our norms around how
state conflicts run will change
because this is the first social
media-powered state conflict
I’ve seen.”
For example, he said, Ukrainian
soldiers are essentially
conducting psychological
operations on their adversary by
directly text messaging soldiers
on the front lines. “This is
remarkable,” Watts added.
Reviving Personal Networks
Social media is also being used
for positive ends. For example,
Levina uses social media to
check in with Ukrainian relatives,
some of whom were too old or
ill to evacuate.
Levina said that social media
is also reviving old-fashioned
personal networks within the
greater Ukrainian community.
“Somebody on Facebook—a
friend of a friend—may say,
‘We know that people in this
hospital...really need catheters,’”
she said. “So everybody in the
network is looking for medical
catheters of a particular size that
would then be shipped.” This kind
of strong, grassroots organizing
has been “amazing,” Levina said.
Still, Levina called for continued
vigilance. “We have to be active
skeptics, not cynics,” she said.
“We really need to keep checking
the information and not be lazy.”
In the new information war, that’s
a powerful command.
16
17

PANEL : INFOWARS SOCIAL MEDIA SUMMIT @ MIT 2022
18
19

PANEL : RESPONSIBLE AI SOCIAL MEDIA SUMMIT @ MIT 2022
WHO’S
RESPONSIBLE
FOR
IRRESPONSIBLE
AI?
Software does whatever it’s programmed to
do. The primary factor behind AI ethics is
the people who design and create it.
Renée Richardson Gosline Professor, MIT Sloan, MIT IDE group leader
Rumman Chowdhury Director, Twitter
Chris Gilliard Professor, Macomb Community College
Suresh Venkatasubramanian Asst. Director, U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy
The talk about artificial intelligence
(AI) being ethical and responsible
can be a bit misleading. Software
itself is neither ethical nor
responsible; it does what it’s been
programmed to do. The greater
concern is the people behind
the software. Unfortunately, said
panelists in this SMS@MIT 2022
session, the ethics of many AI
developers and their companies
fall short.
Some irresponsible or biased
practices are due to a kind of
high-tech myopia, said Rumman
Chowdhury, Twitter’s director
of machine learning ethics,
transparency, and accountability. In
Silicon Valley, “people fall into the
trap of solving the problems they
see right in front of their faces,”
she said, and those are often
problems faced by the privileged.
As a result, she added, “we can’t
solve, or even put adequate
resources behind solving larger
issues of imbalanced data sets
or algorithmic ethics.”
“The most fascinating part
of working in responsible AI
and machine learning is that
we’re the ones that get to think
about these systems, truly
as socio-technical systems,”
Chowdhury said.
“There isn’t just one single thing that government or industry or academia
needs to do to address these broader questions. It’s a whole coalition of
efforts that we have to build together.”
SURESH VENKATASUBRAMANIAN
Myopia also can be seen in
business-school students, noted
Renée Richardson Gosline, the
panel’s moderator and a senior
lecturer in management science
at MIT Sloan School and a leader
at the MIT IDE. MBA students
“have all of these wonderful ideas
for companies that they’d like to
launch,” she said. “And the ethics
of the AI conversation oftentimes
lags behind other concerns that
they have.”
‘Massive Harms’
Panelist Chris Gilliard, Professor
of English at Macomb Community
College and an outspoken social
media critic, took a more direct
stance. “We should do more than
just wait for AI developers to
become more ethical,” he insisted.
Instead, Gilliard advocates for
stringent government intervention.
The tradeoff for having sophisticated
technology should not
be surveillance and sacrificing
privacy, in his view: “If we look at
how other industries work…there
are mechanisms so that you are
typically not allowed to just release
something, do massive amounts
of damage, and then perhaps
address those damages later on.”
Gilliard acknowledged that his proregulation
stance is opposed in
Silicon Valley, where unfettered
innovation is coveted. “Using
that as an excuse for companies
to perpetuate all manner of
harms has been a disastrous
formulation,” Gilliard said, “not just
for individuals, but for countries
and society and democracy.”
Chowdhury acknowledged the
responsibility corporations bear.
“In industry, doing responsible AI
means that you are ensuring that
what you are building is, at the
very least, not harming people at
scale, and you are doing your best
to help identify and mitigate those
harms,” she said. Beyond that,
she added, “responsible AI is also
about enabling humans to flourish
and thrive.” Chowdhury sees many
startups building on these ideas as
they develop their companies and
ethical AI may actually “drive the
next wave of unicorns,” she said
Working Together
Suresh Venkatasubramanian,
assistant director of the U.S. Office
of Science and Technology Policy,
a branch of the White House,
has a pragmatic perspective. He
maintained that “there isn’t a single
thing that government or industry
or academia needs to do to
address these broader questions.
It’s a whole coalition of efforts that
we have to build together.”
Those efforts, he added,
could include “guardrails” and
best practices for software
development, making sure that
new products are tested on
the same populations that will
ultimately use them. More rigorous
testing is also needed to protect
people from what he called
“discriminatory impacts.”
Chowdhury summed it up by
saying that “responsible AI is not
this thing you do on the side after
you build your tech. It is actually
a core part of ensuring your tech
is durable.” She urged companies
to “carve out meaningful room for
responsible AI practices, not as a
feel-good function, but as a core
business value.”
Venkatasubramanian agreed that
articulating ethical values and
rights is important. But once that’s
done, he added, it’s time to “allow
our technologists and our creative
folks to build technologies that can
help us respect those rights.”
3 GROUPS WORKING FOR MORE ETHICAL TECH
Startups & Society
Initiative promotes
the adoption of more
ethical and socially
responsible practices
in technology firms.
Parity Responsible
Innovation Fund invests
in innovation that
protects privacy and
security rights and the
ethical use of technology.
National AI Research
Resource Task Force is a
joint venture of the U.S.
National Science Foundation
and the Office of Science and
Technology Policy.
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PANEL : RESPONSIBLE AI SOCIAL MEDIA SUMMIT @ MIT 2022
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SOCIAL MEDIA SUMMIT @ MIT 2022
FINAL
THOUGHTS
The rise of social media has created new and
complex challenges, and there’s no silver bullet to
solve them all. That’s why the MIT Initiative on the
Digital Economy will continue to be a nexus for
ongoing social media research. It’s also why we
intend to keep our annual Social Media Summit@
MIT event free and open to the public.
The IDE serves as an important hub for
academia, industry, public policy, the economy
and society. Understanding the consequences
of social media, both intended and unintended,
is a mission we take seriously. The sometimes
contradictory goals are to protect privacy
while enabling democracy, and to prevent
abuse while providing a platform where
everyone can share their views.
We hope you’ll help keep the IDE at the
forefront of these issues with your support
and participation. To learn more about the
IDE, and to provide support to our important
research and events, please reach out to
Devin Cook or David Verrill.
“The goal is to protect privacy while enabling democracy.”
SINAN ARAL
MANY
THANKS
Thank you to our SMS@MIT channel partners.
The MIT Social Media Summit was made
possible by a collaboration with the MIT Office
of External Relations.
CONTENT Peter Krass, Paula Klein SESSION ILLUSTRATIONS DPICT
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