Friday Night AI | Rethinking Privacy in the Age of AI: Who’s Watching, Who’s Protecting

When

Friday June 6, 2025: 6:30pm to 7:30pm  Add to Calendar /   Add to Google Calendar

Where

Downtown Library: 1st Floor Lobby

Description

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in our daily lives—from personalized recommendations to censorship and surveillance—questions about privacy have taken on new significance. What happens to the data we generate? Who has access, and how is it being used? While AI offers powerful tools for everything from fraud detection to healthcare, it also raises complex ethical and legal concerns around personal freedom, consent, and control over our digital identities. Join us for a conversation with experts in AI, digital rights, and censorship as we explore how emerging technologies are reshaping the boundaries of privacy. We’ll discuss where protections are falling short, what policies are evolving, and how we can build systems that balance innovation with personal agency.

Rada Mihalcea is the Janice M. Jenkins Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan and the Director of the Michigan Artificial Intelligence Lab. Her research interests are in natural language processing, with a focus on multimodal processing and computational social sciences. 

Florian Schaubb
Florian Schaub is an associate professor of Information and of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. His interdisciplinary research combines privacy, human-computer interaction, emerging technologies, and public policy. He studies people's privacy decision making and behavior, investigates technology-related privacy implications, and develops human-centric privacy solutions that help people better manage their privacy in technology contexts.

Roya Ensafi
Roya Ensafi is an associate professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan, where her research focuses on Internet security and privacy, with the goal of creating techniques and systems to better protect users online. She is particularly passionate about online censorship, geo-discrimination, surveillance, and related threats to Internet freedom. Prof. Ensafi is the founder of Censored Planet, a global censorship observatory. 

This event is in partnership with the Michigan AI Lab.

The Library intends to provide a live stream of this event pending the presenter's permission. Please check back closer to the event for additional updates.