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GIDS Seminar Series Presents Alex ' Sandy' Pentland

November 01, 2016
Rush Rhees Hawkins Carlson Room

2016-2017 Seminar Series

Presented by the Rochester Center of Excellence in Data Science

Reinventing the social contract in an age of big data

Alex Pentland MIT, Datapop Alliance

Advisory Board Member American Bar Association, UN Sec. General, World Econ. Forum

Abstract: Big data is bringing a transparency that threatens everything from personal privacy to the elite corruption, and which is reinventing law as algorithm.  It is also reforming our ideas about human society, rationality, and autonomy, producing a new computational social science.   We need to use the lessons of this new science, together with new privacy and security technologies,  to reinvent the social contracts that underpin our societies.

Bio: Professor Alex "Sandy" Pentland directs the MIT Connection Science and Human Dynamics labs and previously helped create and direct the MIT Media Lab and the Media Lab Asia in India. He is one of the most-cited scientists in the world, and Forbes recently declared him one of the "7 most powerful data scientists in the world" along with Google founders and the Chief Technical Officer of the United States. He has received numerous awards and prizes such as the McKinsey Award from Harvard Business Review, the 40th Anniversary of the Internet from DARPA, and the Brandeis Award for work in privacy.

He is a founding member of advisory boards for Google, AT&T, Nissan, the American Bar Association and the UN Secretary General, a serial entrepreneur who has co-founded more than a dozen companies including social enterprises such as the Data Transparency Lab, and the Harvard-ODI-MIT DataPop Alliance. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and leader within the World Economic Forum.

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

11:00 am -12:00 pm Talk | Reception to follow

Rush Rhees Library, Hawkins Carlson Room

 

Category: Talks