Professor of Public Policy; Director, Science, Technology, and Public Policy program
Parthasarathy studies the governance of emerging science and technology and the politics of evidence and expertise in policy in comparative and international perspective. Her current research focuses on equity in innovation and innovation policy. She co-hosts The Received Wisdom podcast.
From A.I. to zero emissions
Ford School faculty host and are featured in a variety of podcasts, covering policy topics from artificial intelligence, everyday economics, national security, and more.
My job has always been to demonstrate to...
Former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio will join the Ford School faculty for winter 2024 as a Harry A. and Margaret D. Towsley Foundation Policymaker in Residence. De Blasio will teach a course open to all on “When Policy Met Politics: How Real...
The New York State Office of Information Technology Services (ITS) has outlined the ethical issues with the state’s use of facial recognition technology (FRT) in schools. The report titled “Use of Biometric Identifying Technology in Schools” found...
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...
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....
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 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...
Artificial intelligence—AI for short—is all over the news lately. And for good or ill, it has implications for us all.
Two University of Michigan professors—Nigel Melville from the Ross School of Business and Shobita Parthasarathy from the Ford...
"The Republicans are just in a really difficult situation, because their margin is so small and this bloc is so determined. They want to be able to stymie things if things are not going their way. This is an effort to wield as much power as they can...
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...
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...
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...
As ChatGPT hits three months in operation, its reach and uses continue to widen along with a range of efforts and research to grasp and anticipate the upside and downside of using artificial intelligence to do what humans would normally do.
Ford...
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...
The Graham Sustainability Institute’s Carbon Neutrality Acceleration Program (CNAP) announced $1,160,000 in funding for six new faculty research projects. CNAP is a multi-year, multimillion-dollar program created in 2020 with a $5 million gift from...
ChatGPT, Microsoft’s artificial-intelligence (AI) algorithm, has been subject to intense scrutiny since its launch in November, becoming instantly popular because it was made free and easily accessible. Proponents are amazed at its ability to...
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...
Jenna Bednar published “The Fractured Superpower: Federalism is Remaking U.S. Democracy and Foreign Policy,” in Foreign Affairs.
The Coalition for Networked Information, the Association of Research Libraries, and EDUCAUSE awarded Paul Courant the...
Three Ford School faculty have developed exciting new online courses to equip learners and professionals around the globe with interdisciplinary skills that help them engage in and inform complex public policy decision-making processes. Elisabeth...
The University of Michigan has officially launched its invitation to apply to be the next Joan and Sanford Weill Dean of Public Policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. The job description calls for “an experienced and inventive...
A new massive open online course available on Michigan Online will help STEM and policy professionals, community organizers, and students understand how injustices can become embedded in technology and associated policies. “Justice and Equity in...
Large Language Models (LLMs) are artificial intelligence tools that can read, summarize and translate texts and predict future words in a sentence letting them generate sentences similar to how humans talk and write. Shobita Parthasarathy, professor...
India's top court upheld a woman's right to an abortion up to 24 weeks into pregnancy, regardless of marital status, a widely hailed decision by women's rights activists.
The right to abortion has proved contentious globally after the U.S....
Three Ford School faculty members have played an integral role in U-M's Anti-Racism Hiring Initiative, providing expertise and guidance to the initiative.
The Anti-Racism Hiring Initiative is led by the Office of the Provost and aims to bring 21...
In an era when the Indian government has prioritized women's menstrual health and movies like Netflix's "Period. End of Sentence" are garnering worldwide attention, the distribution of disposable sanitary pads to women in India's rural areas has...
Major credit card companies announced this week that they will adopt a new code to flag gun sales. While gun control advocates are celebrating, Shobita Parthasarathy, director of the Science, Technology and Public Policy program, warns the policy...
This fall, the Ford School’s Leadership Initiative is launching a new program for graduate students to learn about different pathways to leadership from Ford School faculty in an intimate, informal setting.
Professor Morela Hernandez, director...
President Joe Biden recently named Renee Wegrzyn as the inaugural director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a new agency tasked with finding innovative solutions to biomedical problems. Nature asked Shobita...
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) released a preliminary policy recommendation that would allow for the use of facial recognition technology during criminal investigations. According to Public Source, the draft policy is "intended to guide CMU’s use...
