CS 184/PUBLPOL 170: Bridging Policy and Tech Through Design

This class introduces students from technical and social science backgrounds to one another and to important ethical quandaries at the junction of policy and technology. In the course’s first year, groups worked on issues like detecting hate speech (applying Natural Language Processing to help the Southern Poverty Law Center) and redesigning government agency data toolkits (reorganizing the California Health and Human Services’ website to follow best practices in data management). Students from these groups worked with mentors across departments — including Political Science, Computer Science and Communication — and representatives at their respective partner organizations. Two students continued their work into Summer 2020, one with California Health and Human Services and the other with his CS mentor.

SOC 141P: Public Interest Tech: Case Studies

This course features PIT experts in a weekly guest lecture series. In previous iterations of this course, students heard from experts in fields including data privacy, AI policy, and tech justice. 

During the 2020-21 academic year, we are focusing on highlighting individuals who bring interdisciplinary lenses to their work. In our event with Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, California Supreme Court Justice and Stanford Professor, students learned about key problems and potential solutions in regulating AI systems. The PIT Lab hosted Lauren Chambers, staff technologist at the ACLU of Massachusetts, who shared how she uses data-driven techniques to study police budgets and understand the spread of COVID-19 in prisons. In a talk with Daniel Ho, Director of the Stanford Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab, students learned about a number of opportunities and challenges for AI to improve government service delivery. Additionally, the PIT Lab is creating an AI explainer for policymakers, taking an interdisciplinary approach to describing key questions to ask when grappling with AI systems used by hiring algorithms and wearable health technology.