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Science, Technology, and Public Policy program

The Science, Technology, and Public Policy (STPP) program is a unique research, education, and policy engagement center concerned with cutting-edge questions that arise at the intersection of science, technology, policy, and society.

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Showing 31 - 60 of 373 results
News

Parthasarathy named to prestigious French council

Dec 8, 2023
Ford School professor Shobita Parthasarathy has been named to the scientific council for ANSES, the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety. ANSES is a public administrative body reporting to the Ministries of Health,...
Shobita Parthasarathy
News

Parthasarathy comments on one year of ChatGPT

Dec 6, 2023
One  year ago, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a chatbot built on the large language model GPT-3. Since then, knowledge workers in all sectors have been grappling with the potential uses of it and similar artificial intelligence models—as well as the...
shobita-parthasarathy-chatgpt
In the Media

Kleinman on the hazards of facial recognition technology in schools

Oct 4, 2023 City & State
“One thing that’s different from a lot of these earlier kinds of surveillance technologies is the way that the data travels so far beyond the school where it’s coming from,” Kleinman said in an interview.  “The student data in these databases is...
Headshot of Molly Kleinman
In the Media

"Appropriative" patents a long-term problem - Parthasarathy

Sep 1, 2023 NPR Planet Money
The way that a lot of pharmaceutical companies got their knowledge was often from going to other countries and finding out about Indigenous knowledge and then coming back and testing that. So there's a famous case of Eli Lilly patenting a treatment...
Professor Shobita Parthasarathy leads a discussion in the Betty Ford Classroom
News

Ford School welcomes Yousif Hassan as faculty

Aug 21, 2023
Yousif Hassan will join the Ford School faculty as an assistant professor in January 2024. Hassan’s work examines the social, economic, and political implications of emerging technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) and data focusing on...
Yousif Hassan portrait
News

STPP to explore best practice in community engagement

Aug 1, 2023
As technologists and scientists increasingly engage with communities in order to enhance the societal benefits of their work, and demonstrate its public value, it is important to ensure that such engagements benefit the people they claim to serve....
community building pexels
Publication

Parthasarathy calls for reimagining the innovation process

Jul 19, 2023
The basic model of technological innovation in the U.S. has relied upon academic research and private sector commercialization. While the standard approach has stimulated macroeconomic growth, produced many valuable products, and created jobs,...
Shobita Parthasarathy
News

Ford School welcomes PPIA 2023 cohort

Jun 19, 2023
The 2023 Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) Junior Summer Institute (JSI) has welcomed 23 students from 11 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. This year’s cohort will spend seven weeks taking classes, participating in...
PPIA Welcome 2023
In the Media

Parthasarathy: ChatGPT reinforces human biases

Jun 18, 2023 WDET
Shobita Parthasarathy says ChatGPT simply reiterates language that humans have already created, and that often the ideas and biases that humans exhibit are reinforced by the tool. “[ChatGPT] is not magic. It’s also not an asteroid. It is us. It...
Shobita Parthasarathy
News

Pretrial risk assessment tools found to be subjective and biased

May 4, 2023 Read the full brief
In their attempts to reform the cash bail system, jurisdictions across the country are turning to automated pretrial risk assessment tools that ‘predict’ if a defendant will be arrested for a new crime while waiting for trial or will fail to appear...
Gavel
News

STPP receives grant to study STEM-in-Society training

Apr 21, 2023
As science becomes more central to our daily lives—whether for predicting the impacts of climate change, transforming our physical and cognitive capabilities, or developing life-saving pharmaceuticals—socially responsible research and innovation are...
STEM on a blackboard
News

STPP gift to expand educational opportunities for undergraduates

Mar 22, 2023
The Science, Technology, and Public Policy (STPP) program has received a $250,000 gift to expand educational opportunities for undergraduates across campus. The gift comes from Phil (LSA ’87) and Julie (LSA ’88) Hollyer, parents of Keegan (Ford BA...
Glasses rest on a desktop with various coding windows open on a screen behind
Publication

Ethical implications of defense funding in social science

Mar 22, 2023
Since World War I, defense funding has been a driver of social science’s growth. The dense ties between social science and defense agencies benefitted social research but also attracted decades of heavy criticism. This long and entangled history has...
Joy Rohde
In the Media

AI will 'turbocharge' inequalities in health care - Parthasarathy

Mar 16, 2023 Bridge Michigan
Shobita Parthasarathy, Bridge Michigan: "Health care systems don't even know what data they're missing. That (AI) gets integrated into medical care as a mechanism for achieving efficiency. But they do that without realizing that it's going to...
Professor Shobita Parthasarathy leads a discussion in the Betty Ford Classroom
In the Media

Parthasarathy on AI technology perils

Feb 28, 2023 Business Insider
Business Insider: Run-ins with users show some of the potentially troubling outcomes to expect when companies experiment with the public on new AI technologies, said Shobita Parthasarathy, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan, who...
Shobita Parthasarathy
Publication

Automated License Plate Readers widely used, subject to abuse

Feb 22, 2023
Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) are being used by a growing number of public and private entities to track drivers’ movements and location. The use of the technology is almost entirely unregulated and can be subject to abuse, so some...
Surveillance Cameras
In the Media

Parthasarathy weighs in on implications of ChatGPT

Feb 6, 2023 Nature
Shobita Parthasarathy, Nature: "Besides directly producing toxic content, there are concerns that AI chatbots will embed historical biases or ideas about the world from their training data, such as the superiority of particular cultures, says...
Shobita Parthasarathy
News

Announcing winter 2023 Ford School events

Jan 11, 2023
 The Ford School is pleased to announce an exciting lineup for the winter 2023 Policy Talks @ the Ford School series and other special public events hosted with partners from across campus. Events are free and open to the public unless otherwise...
Headshots of Peter Meijer, Jelani Cobb, Jeh Johnson, Andy Levin, and Angela Harrelson
News

Green discusses the fairness of algorithms at Harvard University

Jan 10, 2023
Postdoctoral scholar Ben Green recently joined Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society for a webinar focused on what fairness means in the context of algorithms and how fairness can be measured. Joined by other scholars...
Ben Green