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CISI Distinguished Speaker: Mehran Sahami

Monday, March 27, 2023 - 3:30pm

Co-Author of "System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot"

Join this discussion/speaking event on the future of big tech. This is event is part of the UVA VPR's Grand Challenge Research Investments.

Location: UVA Rotunda, Dome Room

Date/time: Monday, March 27, 2023 at 3:30 PM

This event will be available by livestream here - https://livestream.com/tavco/systemerrorevent

System Error exposes the root of our current predicament: how Big Tech’s relentless focus on optimization is driving a future that reinforces discrimination, erodes privacy, displaces workers, and pollutes the information we get. This optimization mindset substitutes what companies care about for the values that we as a democratic society might choose to prioritize.

"System Error is a triumph: an analysis of the critical challenges facing our digital society that is as accessible as it is sophisticated. Best of all, the authors offer actual solutions for a reboot that are both timely and feasible."
— Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO of New America

“Read this if you want to understand how to shape our technological future and reinvigorate democracy along the way.”
— Reed Hastings, co-founder and CEO of Netflix

About the Speaker: 

Mehran Sahami is the James and Ellenor Chesebrough Professor and Tencent Chair of the Computer Science department at Stanford University. Prior to joining the Stanford faculty in 2007, he was a Senior Research Scientist at Google. Mehran's research interests include computer science education, machine learning, and ethics.  He has published numerous research papers and holds more than 20 patents, including work related to web search, recommendation engines in social networks, and email spam filtering that have been deployed in commercial applications.  He served as co-chair of the ACM/IEEE-CS joint task force on Computer Science Curricula 2013 (CS2013), and was appointed by California Governor Jerry Brown to the state's Computer Science Strategic Implementation Plan Advisory Panel.  He is a co-author with Rob Reich and Jeremy Weinstein of the book “System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot.”