“Every move you make…every step you take…, I’ll be watching you” sang The Police in 1983. Fast forward to 2017 and these lyrics are more relevant than ever. Every "like" on Facebook or Twitter, your shopping habits online and offline, destinations you visit on your vacation, and every Google search, leave a digital footprint in cyberspace. All these digital traces left by hundreds of thousands of people amount to Big Data that is mined for very detailed information about individuals. In his lecture at SWPS University, Dr. Michał Kosiński, Assistant Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business and a graduate of SWPS University will talk about The End of Privacy brought about by modern technology.
The lecture will be delivered in English and it is open to the public. Free admission.
Lecture
November
23 2017
Warsaw
The End of Privacy
A growing proportion of human activities such as social interactions, entertainment, shopping, and gathering information are now mediated by digital devices and services. Such digitally mediated activities produce an unprecedented amount of digital footprints that can be used to reveal our intimate traits, emotions, and predict future behavior. Given the progress in Artificial Intelligence and computational psychology, we should get ready for the future where privacy is a privilege reserved for the few.
Clairvoyance or Science
Nowadays, fortunetellers can pack up their crystal balls, send them to a recycling depot and invest in a good algorithm that can predict with a high degree of probability not only future behavior of individuals (e.g. how someone will vote in an upcoming election – 85 percent accuracy), but also their skin color (95 percent) or their sexual orientation (88 percent accuracy). Other information that can be distilled from Big Data includes the level of intelligence, smoking or non-smoking habits, religious affiliation, and the type of family someone comes from (one- or two parent family). So if a computational psychology researcher tells you: “You will meet a tall dark stranger”, you can be about 90 percent sure that it will happen.
Speaker
Michał Kosiński, Ph.D. – Assistant Professor in Organisational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from University of Cambridge, an M.Phil. in Psychometrics, and a M.S. in Social Psychology. He is also a graduate of SWPS University. He is a leading expert in psychometrics, a data-driven sub-branch of psychology. His research focuses on studying humans through the lenses of digital footprints left behind while using digital platforms and devices.
Michał coordinates the myPersonality project, which involves global collaboration between over 200 researchers, analyzing the detailed psycho-demographic profiles of over 8 million Facebook users. While at Cambridge University, he started an open-source online adaptive testing platform Concerto and ApplyMagicSauce.com predictive engine.
Previously, Michał was the Deputy Director of the University of Cambridge Psychometrics Centre, a researcher at Microsoft Research, and a post-doc at Stanford's Computer Science Department.
Time and Location
November 23, 2017, at 17.00 - 18.30
Room S303
SWPS University, Chodakowska 19/31, Warsaw
Open meeting, free admission.
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