Theory for Society

As technology reaches increasingly deeply into our everyday lives, changing the fabric of society woven by our interactions – with one another, with government, with the corporate world – design decisions have increasing impact on basic social values such as privacy, fairness, and protection from physical and emotional harm. Complexity of this type requires mathematically rigorous notions that allow us to quantify these goods and their loss, to explore fundamental tradeoffs and limitations, and to lay the theoretical groundwork for what can be achieved. This talk describes efforts of this type in two areas: privacy-preserving data analysis and fairness in classification, and touches on an agenda for future directions.