What do they know about me? Contents and Concerns of Online Behavioral Profiles

Data aggregators collect large amount of information about individual users and create detailed online behavioral profiles of individuals. Behavioral profiles benefit users by improving products and services. However, they have also raised concerns regarding user privacy, transparency of collection practices and accuracy of data in the profiles. To improve transparency, some companies are allowing users to access their behavioral profiles. In this work, we investigated behavioral profiles of users by utilizing these access mechanisms. Using in-person interviews (n=8), we analyzed the data shown in the profiles, elicited user concerns, and estimated accuracy of profiles. We confirmed our interview findings via an online survey (n=100). To assess the claim of improving transparency, we compared data shown in profiles with the data that companies have about users. More than 70% of the participants expressed concerns about collection of sensitive data such as credit and health information, level of detail and how their data may be used. We found a large gap between the data shown in profiles and the data possessed by companies. A large number of profiles were inaccurate with as much as 80% inaccuracy. We discuss implications for public policy management.Comment: in Ashwini Rao, Florian Schaub, and Norman Sadeh What do they know about me? Contents and Concerns of Online Behavioral Profiles (2014) ASE BigData/SocialInformatics/PASSAT/BioMedCom Conferenc

Gradual Information Diffusion and Asset Price Momentum

Gradual information diffusion model predicts that as private information travels across the population, pricing accuracy would improve and asset prices would exhibit momentum as a result. In laboratory markets I investigate the market’s aggregation capacity in response to varying proportions of informed traders as a consequence of information diffusion. The results demonstrate that pricing errors are high when private information is dispersed and that, as the information spreads, the market gradually revise the errors and manifest momentum. Analysis suggests that aggregation under dispersed information conditions is hampered by three factors: equilibrium multiplicity, slow arrival of myopic traders, and anonymous trading.

LHC Symposium 2003: Summary Talk

This summary talk reviews the LHC 2003 Symposium, focusing on expectations as we prepare to leap over the current energy frontier into new territory. We may learn from what happened in the two most recent examples of leaping into new energy territory. Quite different scenarios appeared in those two cases. In addition, we review the status of the machine and experiments as reported at the Symposium. Finally, I suggest an attitude which may be most appropriate as we look forward to the opportunities anticipated for the first data from the LHC.Comment: Summary Talk: LHC Symposium, May 1-3, 2003, Fermilab, Batavia, IL US

Taking Turing by Surprise? Designing Digital Computers for morally-loaded contexts

There is much to learn from what Turing hastily dismissed as Lady Lovelace s objection. Digital computers can indeed surprise us. Just like a piece of art, algorithms can be designed in such a way as to lead us to question our understanding of the world, or our place within it. Some humans do lose the capacity to be surprised in that way. It might be fear, or it might be the comfort of ideological certainties. As lazy normative animals, we do need to be able to rely on authorities to simplify our reasoning: that is ok. Yet the growing sophistication of systems designed to free us from the constraints of normative engagement may take us past a point of no-return. What if, through lack of normative exercise, our moral muscles became so atrophied as to leave us unable to question our social practices? This paper makes two distinct normative claims: 1. Decision-support systems should be designed with a view to regularly jolting us out of our moral torpor. 2. Without the depth of habit to somatically anchor model certainty, a computer s experience of something new is very different from that which in humans gives rise to non-trivial surprises. This asymmetry has key repercussions when it comes to the shape of ethical agency in artificial moral agents. The worry is not just that they would be likely to leap morally ahead of us, unencumbered by habits. The main reason to doubt that the moral trajectories of humans v. autonomous systems might remain compatible stems from the asymmetry in the mechanisms underlying moral change. Whereas in humans surprises will continue to play an important role in waking us to the need for moral change, cognitive processes will rule when it comes to machines. This asymmetry will translate into increasingly different moral outlooks, to the point of likely unintelligibility. The latter prospect is enough to doubt the desirability of autonomous moral agents

Whose glory

John 12:36b-43

For better or for worse? Investigating the meaning of change

For most, change makes a regular appearance in everyday life and has the capacity to usher in excitement, growth, and chaos. Due to the variable nature of change, people may hold subjective definitions of what “change” typically means. Across four studies, we examine the possibility that there are meaningful individual differences in the dominant subjective definitions people hold about the nature of change. Study 1 and 2 investigated the spontaneous associations participants make when asked to think about change, and found that holding a positive or negative general view about change (as measured by the Nature of Change scale, developed by the researchers) predicts the valence of self-generated associations. Studies 1 and 2 also demonstrate that people with an implicit entity theory of change (believing that people largely cannot change) report more negative and less positive dominant definitions of change than incremental theorists who believe people’s attributes are changeable. Study 3 expands on this finding to demonstrate a link between beliefs about the Nature of Change and beliefs about the role of effort in attributions of success. Participants who believe change is positive, predictable and controllable are more likely to believe that success is a product of effort than participants who believe change is negative, unpredictable and uncontrollable. Definitions of change predict success attributions over and above people’s implicit incremental or entity theories, which have previously been shown to predict attributions. Finally, Study 4 investigates the possibility that more precise definitions of change (as improvement, decline, or random) would alter people’s responses to the implicit theories scale, demonstrating that responses are somewhat contingent on definitions of change Further, change defined as improvement, decline, or random differentially predicted success attributions, which are also again predicted by people’s Nature of Change definitions. Overall, the current set of studies demonstrates that individual differences in people’s reactions to change are important to consider and may be as dynamic and diverse as change itself

Towards a pragmatic approach for dealing with uncertainties in water management practice

Management of water resources is afflicted with uncertainties. Nowadays it is facing more and new uncertainties since pace and dimension of changes (e.g. climatic, demographic) are accelerating and are likely to increase even more in the future. Hence it is crucial to find pragmatic ways to deal with these uncertainties in water management. So far, decision-making under uncertainty in water management is based on either intuition, heuristics and experience of water managers or on expert assessments all of which are only of limited use for water managers in practice. We argue for an analytical yet pragmatic approach to enable practitioners to deal with uncertainties in a more explicit and systematic way and allow for better informed decisions. Our approach is based on the concept of framing, referring to the different ways in which people make sense of the world and of the uncertainties. We applied and tested recently developed parameters that aim to shed light on the framing of uncertainty in two sub-basins of the Rhine. We present and discuss the results of a series of stakeholder interactions in the two basins aimed at developing strategies for improving dealing with uncertainties. The strategies are synthesized in a cross-checking list based on the uncertainty framing parameters as a hands-on tool for systematically identifying improvement options when dealing with uncertainty in water management practice. We conclude with suggestions for testing the developed check-list as a tool for decision aid in water management practice. Key words: water management, future uncertainties, framing of uncertainties, hands-on decision aid, tools for practice, robust strategies, social learnin

Testing of disability identification tool for schools

There has been an ongoing concern about the lack of reliable data on disabled children in schools. To date there has been no consistent way of identifying and categorising disabilities. Schools in England are currentlyrequired to collect data on children with Special Educational Need (SEN), but this does not capture information about all disabled children. The lack of this information may seriously restrict capacity at all levels of policy and practice to understand and respond to the needs of disabled children and their families in line with Disability Discrimination Act (2005) and the single Equality Act (2010). The aim of the project was to test the draft tools for identifying disability and accompanying guidance in a sample of all types of maintained schools in order to assess their usability and reliability and whether they resulted in the generation of robust and consistent data that could reliably inform school returns for the annual School Census

Who do you think you are? Intimate pasts made public

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