AI & Society Lab
The AI & Society Lab at Haverford does research and contributes to tech policy focused on the societal impacts of artificial intelligence. The lab is directed by Shibulal Family Professor Sorelle Friedler, and regularly collaborates with Assistant Professor Danaé Metaxa’s lab at the University of Pennsylvania and with other universities and civil society organizations.
Sorelle Friedler
Sorelle Friedler is the Shibulal Family Professor of Computer Science at Haverford College, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution, and the Chair of ACM’s U.S. Technology Policy Committee. She previously served as the Assistant Director for Data and Democracy in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under the Biden-Harris Administration where she co-authored the AI Bill of Rights and contributed to policy governing the federal use of AI. She is a Co-Founder of the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT).
Prof. Friedler’s research focuses on the societal impacts of AI, including the fairness and interpretability of machine learning, AI auditing, and AI policy. She has received grants from the NSF, DARPA, the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and others. Key papers include work on disparate impact in maching learning and on accelerating materials discovery with interpretable machine learning.
Before Haverford, Prof. Friedler was a software engineer at Alphabet (formerly Google), where she worked in the X lab and in search infrastructure. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a B.A. from Swarthmore College.
Current Lab Foci
AI & Democracy
From freedom of speech to government surveillance to access to the polls, the AI & Society Lab is investigating the impacts of AI on democracy, and using AI and other algorithmic techniques to support democratic transparency and access.
AI & Civil Rights
From foundational work on disparate impact and machine learning to more recent AI audits and AI governance approaches, the AI & Society Lab has long been focused on measuring and mitigating the impacts of AI on civil rights.
Tech Policy
Prof. Friedler regularly writes on and contributes to tech policy, especially on issues related to AI and civil rights, and other areas related to the lab’s work.
AI & Society Team
The AI & Society Lab includes Prof. Friedler, Haverford undergraduate students, and collaborations with researchers at other institutions.