Designing for Safety: Towards More Equitable and Trustworthy Systems
Abstract: Algorithmic and data-driven technologies have permeated multiple aspects of our lives making it difficult to be disentangled from the effects of its abuses as well. Moreover, the opaqueness of these technologies contributes to stakeholders massively under-serving some communities and underestimating the growing number of bad actors who have learned to game systems. Designing better and safer online experiences requires shedding light where powerful actors misuse and abuse algorithmic technologies, violate human rights, and harm marginalized communities in all parts of the world.
In this talk, I will present findings from multiple studies that illustrate how investigating individual differences - variance in attitudes, culture, and values - helps in understanding barriers to adopting safety behaviors. Through interdisciplinary methodologies, I offer empirical evidence that supports the development of equitable and trustworthy safety mechanisms. The findings offer key insights into how people perceive, evaluate, and address risks to their safety.
Bio: Daricia is a Post-Doctoral Researcher in the Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics (FATE) group at Microsoft Research in New York. She is passionate about finding ways to design safety tools that make the internet a safer place for all people. As such, her work weaves together strings from Human-Computer Interaction and Artificial Intelligence to highlight opportunities for fairness, transparency, and justice online. Prior to joining MSR, she earned her Ph.D. in Human-Centered Computing at Clemson University under the advisement of Dr. Bart Knijnenburg. Her dissertation investigated alternative pathways for the design of justice-oriented safety countermeasures particularly for people in non-Western contexts. During her tenure as a graduate student, she was fortunate to have been selected as Meta Fellow (formerly Facebook), Google Scholar, and a Trailblazer in research by the United Nations for her work on online safety in the Caribbean.
A pizza lunch for attendees will be available at 11:45 a.m. in CS 150.