AI & Society Lab Prof. Sorelle Friedler, Haverford College

Research

The AI & Society Lab conducts research about the societal impacts of AI and how various AI governance procedures and technical mechanisms can help to bring about better societal outcomes. This includes work along a variety of ongoing and overlapping societal themes. Work by the lab also includes developing interpretability techniques and using them to further science.

Highlighted

Auditing GPT s Content Moderation Guardrails: Can ChatGPT Write Your Favorite TV Show
Auditing GPT's Content Moderation Guardrails: Can ChatGPT Write Your Favorite TV Show?
Yaaseen Mahomed, Charlie M. Crawford, Sanjana Gautam, Sorelle A. Friedler, Danaë Metaxa
The 2024 ACM Conference on Fairness Accountability and Transparency  ·  2024
The Im possibility of fairness
The (Im)possibility of fairness
Sorelle A. Friedler, Carlos Scheidegger, Suresh Venkatasubramanian
Communications of the ACM  ·  2021
Fairness and Abstraction in Sociotechnical Systems
Fairness and Abstraction in Sociotechnical Systems
Andrew D. Selbst, Danah Boyd, Sorelle A. Friedler, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Janet Vertesi
Proceedings of the Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency  ·  2019
Machine-learning-assisted materials discovery using failed experiments
Machine-learning-assisted materials discovery using failed experiments
Paul Raccuglia, Katherine C. Elbert, Philip D. F. Adler, Casey Falk, Malia B. Wenny, Aurelio Mollo, Matthias Zeller, Sorelle A. Friedler, Joshua Schrier, Alexander J. Norquist
Nature  ·  2016
Certifying and Removing Disparate Impact
Certifying and Removing Disparate Impact
Michael Feldman, Sorelle A. Friedler, John Moeller, Carlos Scheidegger, Suresh Venkatasubramanian
Proceedings of the 21th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining  ·  2015

Selected in-progress works

Government AI Files
Government AI Files
Emma Lurie, Emma Fauser, Danaé Metaxa, Sorelle A. Friedler

The U.S. federal government releases information about AI systems through a variety of (imperfect) transparency filings. In this project, our goals are to make it easy to search across filings, reveal how the government uses AI, and suggest improved AI transparency mechanisms.

AI Watchman
AI Watchman
Yunlang Dai, Emma Lurie, Danaé Metaxa, Sorelle A. Friedler

Chatbots rely on content moderation to keep undesireable content, like violent or sexual content, from being generated. But such filters can also block the generation of other information. In this project, we longitudinally track what societal topics are refused by OpenAI’s GPT series and DeepSeek’s chatbot.

All

2026

Fast algorithms to improve fair information access in networks
Fast algorithms to improve fair information access in networks
Dennis Robert Windham, Caroline J. Wendt, Alex Crane, Madelyn J. Warr, Freda Shi, Sorelle A. Friedler, Blair D. Sullivan, Aaron Clauset
Forthcoming, PLOS Complex Systems  ·  2026
The OMB Artificial Intelligence Memoranda
The OMB Artificial Intelligence Memoranda
Sorelle Friedler, Andrew D. Selbst
Forthcoming, Berkeley Law and Technology Journal  ·  2026

2025

Identity-related Speech Suppression in Generative AI Content Moderation
Identity-related Speech Suppression in Generative AI Content Moderation
Grace Proebsting, Oghenefejiro Isaacs Anigboro, Charlie M. Crawford, Danaé Metaxa, Sorelle A. Friedler
Proceedings of the 5th ACM Conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization  ·  2025
Feature Responsiveness Scores: Model-Agnostic Explanations for Recourse
Feature Responsiveness Scores: Model-Agnostic Explanations for Recourse
Seung Hyun Cheon, Anneke Wernerfelt, Sorelle Friedler, Berk Ustun
International Conference on Learning Representations  ·  2025

2024

Auditing GPT s Content Moderation Guardrails: Can ChatGPT Write Your Favorite TV Show
Auditing GPT's Content Moderation Guardrails: Can ChatGPT Write Your Favorite TV Show?
Yaaseen Mahomed, Charlie M. Crawford, Sanjana Gautam, Sorelle A. Friedler, Danaë Metaxa
The 2024 ACM Conference on Fairness Accountability and Transparency  ·  2024

2023

Reducing Access Disparities in Networks using Edge Augmentation
Reducing Access Disparities in Networks using Edge Augmentation
Ashkan Bashardoust, Sorelle Friedler, Carlos Scheidegger, Blair D. Sullivan, Suresh Venkatasubramanian
2023 ACM Conference on Fairness Accountability and Transparency  ·  2023
Measuring and mitigating voting access disparities: a study of race and polling locations in Florida and North Carolina
Measuring and mitigating voting access disparities: a study of race and polling locations in Florida and North Carolina
Mohsen Abbasi, Calvin Barrett, Kristian Lum, Sorelle A. Friedler, Suresh Venkatasubramanian
2023 ACM Conference on Fairness Accountability and Transparency  ·  2023
Energy and Carbon Considerations of Fine-Tuning BERT
Energy and Carbon Considerations of Fine-Tuning BERT
Xiaorong Wang, Clara Na, Emma Strubell, Sorelle Friedler, Sasha Luccioni
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2023  ·  2023
Information access representations and social capital in networks
Information access representations and social capital in networks
Ashkan Bashardoust, Hannah C. Beilinson, Sorelle A. Friedler, Jiajie Ma, Jade Rousseau, Carlos E. Scheidegger, Blair D. Sullivan, Nasanbayar Ulzii-Orshikh, Suresh Venkatasubramanian
arXiv  ·  2023

2022

Active meta-learning for predicting and selecting perovskite crystallization experiments
Active meta-learning for predicting and selecting perovskite crystallization experiments
Venkateswaran Shekar, Gareth Nicholas, Mansoor Ani Najeeb, Margaret Zeile, Vincent Yu, …, Philip W. Nega, Emory M. Chan, Alexander J. Norquist, Joshua Schrier, Sorelle A. Friedler
The Journal of Chemical Physics  ·  2022
Models for understanding and quantifying feedback in societal systems
Models for understanding and quantifying feedback in societal systems
Lydia Reader, Pegah Nokhiz, Cathleen Power, Neal Patwari, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Sorelle Friedler
2022 ACM Conference on Fairness Accountability and Transparency  ·  2022

2021

The Im possibility of fairness
The (Im)possibility of fairness
Sorelle A. Friedler, Carlos Scheidegger, Suresh Venkatasubramanian
Communications of the ACM  ·  2021
Shapley Residuals: Quantifying the limits of the Shapley value for explanations
Shapley Residuals: Quantifying the limits of the Shapley value for explanations
I. Elizabeth Kumar, Carlos Scheidegger, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Sorelle A. Friedler
Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS)  ·  2021

2020

Fairness warnings and fair-MAML: learning fairly with minimal data
Fairness warnings and fair-MAML: learning fairly with minimal data
Dylan Slack, Sorelle A. Friedler, Emile Givental
Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency  ·  2020
Problems with Shapley-value-based explanations as feature importance measures
Problems with Shapley-value-based explanations as feature importance measures
I. Elizabeth Kumar, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Carlos Scheidegger, Sorelle Friedler
Proceedings of the 37th International Conference on Machine Learning  ·  2020

2019

Anthropogenic biases in chemical reaction data hinder exploratory inorganic synthesis
Anthropogenic biases in chemical reaction data hinder exploratory inorganic synthesis
Xiwen Jia, Allyson Lynch, Yuheng Huang, Matthew Danielson, Immaculate Lang’at, …, Aaron E. Ruby, Hao Wang, Sorelle A. Friedler, Alexander J. Norquist, Joshua Schrier
Nature  ·  2019
Gaps in Information Access in Social Networks
Gaps in Information Access in Social Networks
Benjamin Fish, Ashkan Bashardoust, Danah Boyd, Sorelle Friedler, Carlos Scheidegger, Suresh Venkatasubramanian
The World Wide Web Conference  ·  2019
Fairness in representation: quantifying stereotyping as a representational harm
Fairness in representation: quantifying stereotyping as a representational harm
Mohsen Abbasi, Sorelle A. Friedler, Carlos Scheidegger, Suresh Venkatasubramanian
Proceedings of the 2019 SIAM International Conference on Data Mining  ·  2019
Assessing the Local Interpretability of Machine Learning Models
Assessing the Local Interpretability of Machine Learning Models
Dylan Slack, Sorelle A. Friedler, Carlos Scheidegger, Chitradeep Dutta Roy
NeurIPS Workshop on Human-Centric Machine Learning  ·  2019
Energy Usage Reports: Environmental awareness as part of algorithmic accountability
Energy Usage Reports: Environmental awareness as part of algorithmic accountability
Kadan Lottick, Silvia Susai, Sorelle A. Friedler, Jonathan Wilson
NeurIPS Workshop on Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning  ·  2019
Fairness and Abstraction in Sociotechnical Systems
Fairness and Abstraction in Sociotechnical Systems
Andrew D. Selbst, Danah Boyd, Sorelle A. Friedler, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Janet Vertesi
Proceedings of the Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency  ·  2019
A comparative study of fairness-enhancing interventions in machine learning
A comparative study of fairness-enhancing interventions in machine learning
Sorelle A. Friedler, Carlos Scheidegger, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Sonam Choudhary, Evan P. Hamilton, Derek Roth
Proceedings of the Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency  ·  2019
Automated Congressional Redistricting
Automated Congressional Redistricting
Harry A. Levin, Sorelle A. Friedler
ACM Journal of Experimental Algorithmics  ·  2019
Disentangling Influence: Using disentangled representations to audit model predictions
Disentangling Influence: Using disentangled representations to audit model predictions
Charles Marx, Richard Phillips, Sorelle Friedler, Carlos Scheidegger, Suresh Venkatasubramanian
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems  ·  2019
Experiment Specification, Capture and Laboratory Automation Technology ESCALATE : a software pipeline for automated chemical experimentation and data management
Experiment Specification, Capture and Laboratory Automation Technology (ESCALATE): a software pipeline for automated chemical experimentation and data management
Ian M. Pendleton, Gary Cattabriga, Zhi Li, Mansoor Ani Najeeb, Sorelle A. Friedler, Alexander J. Norquist, Emory M. Chan, Joshua Schrier
MRS Communications  ·  2019

2018

Decision Making with Limited Feedback: Error bounds for Recidivism Prediction and Predictive Policing
Decision Making with Limited Feedback: Error bounds for Recidivism Prediction and Predictive Policing
Danielle Ensign, Frielder Sorelle, Neville Scott, Scheidegger Carlos, Venkatasubramanian Suresh
Proceedings of Algorithmic Learning Theory  ·  2018
Interpretable Active Learning
Interpretable Active Learning
Richard Phillips, Kyu Hyun Chang, Sorelle A. Friedler
Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency  ·  2018
Runaway Feedback Loops in Predictive Policing
Runaway Feedback Loops in Predictive Policing
Danielle Ensign, Sorelle A. Friedler, Scott Neville, Carlos Scheidegger, Suresh Venkatasubramanian
Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency  ·  2018
Auditing black-box models for indirect influence
Auditing black-box models for indirect influence
Philip Adler, Casey Falk, Sorelle A. Friedler, Tionney Nix, Gabriel Rybeck, Carlos Scheidegger, Brandon Smith, Suresh Venkatasubramanian
Knowledge and Information Systems  ·  2018

2016

Principles for accountable algorithms and a social impact statement for algorithms
Principles for accountable algorithms and a social impact statement for algorithms
Nicholas Diakopoulos, Sorelle Friedler, Marcelo Arenas, Solon Barocas, Michael Hay, …, Arnaud Sahuguet, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Christo Wilson, Cong Yu, Bendert Zevenbergen
Dagstuhl working group write-up  ·  2016
Hiring by Algorithm: Predicting and Preventing Disparate Impact
Hiring by Algorithm: Predicting and Preventing Disparate Impact
Ifeoma Ajunwa, Sorelle Friedler, Carlos E. Scheidegger, Suresh Venkatasubramanian
Presented at the Yale Law School Information Society Project conference Unlocking the Black Box: The Promise and Limits of Algorithmic Accountability in the Professions  ·  2016
Call for Papers: Special Issue on Social and Technical Trade-Offs
Call for Papers: Special Issue on Social and Technical Trade-Offs
Solon Barocas, danah boyd, Sorelle Friedler, Hanna Wallach
Big Data  ·  2016
Machine-learning-assisted materials discovery using failed experiments
Machine-learning-assisted materials discovery using failed experiments
Paul Raccuglia, Katherine C. Elbert, Philip D. F. Adler, Casey Falk, Malia B. Wenny, Aurelio Mollo, Matthias Zeller, Sorelle A. Friedler, Joshua Schrier, Alexander J. Norquist
Nature  ·  2016
Convex Hull for Probabilistic Points
Convex Hull for Probabilistic Points
F. Betul Atalay, Sorelle A. Friedler, Dianna Xu
2016 29th SIBGRAPI Conference on Graphics, Patterns and Images (SIBGRAPI)  ·  2016

2015

Certifying and Removing Disparate Impact
Certifying and Removing Disparate Impact
Michael Feldman, Sorelle A. Friedler, John Moeller, Carlos Scheidegger, Suresh Venkatasubramanian
Proceedings of the 21th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining  ·  2015
A sensor-based framework for kinetic data compression
A sensor-based framework for kinetic data compression
Sorelle A. Friedler, David M. Mount
Computational Geometry  ·  2015

2013

Permissions based on wireless network data
Permissions based on wireless network data
Mohammed Waleed Kadous, Isaac Richard Taylor, Cedric Dupont, Brian Patrick Williams, Sorelle Alaina Friedler
US patent 20130244684 A1  ·  2013
Position indication controls for device locations
Position indication controls for device locations
Sorelle Alaina Friedler, Mohammed Waleed Kadous, Andrew Lookingbill
US patent 20130131973 A1 (also WO 2013078125 A1)  ·  2013

2011

2010

Geometric Algorithms for Objects in Motion
Geometric Algorithms for Objects in Motion
Sorelle A. Friedler
Ph.D. thesis from University of Maryland, College Park. Dissertation committee: Prof. David Mount (chair), Prof. William Gasarch, Prof. Samir Khuller, Prof. Steven Selden, Prof. Amitabh Varshney.  ·  2010
Spatio-temporal Range Searching over Compressed Kinetic Sensor Data
Spatio-temporal Range Searching over Compressed Kinetic Sensor Data
Sorelle A. Friedler, David M. Mount
Lecture Notes in Computer Science  ·  2010
Approximation algorithm for the kinetic robust K-center problem
Approximation algorithm for the kinetic robust K-center problem
Sorelle A. Friedler, David M. Mount
Computational Geometry  ·  2010

2009

Compressing Kinetic Data from Sensor Networks
Compressing Kinetic Data from Sensor Networks
Sorelle A. Friedler, David M. Mount
Lecture Notes in Computer Science  ·  2009

2008

Enabling teachers to explore grade patterns to identify individual needs and promote fairer student assessment
Enabling teachers to explore grade patterns to identify individual needs and promote fairer student assessment
Sorelle A. Friedler, Yee Lin Tan, Nir J. Peer, Ben Shneiderman
Computers & Education  ·  2008