Real-world Interactions & Systems for Change (RISC) Group

Creating social changes requires respecting the agency of even the most vulnerable, and helping them exercise their agency (e.g., voicing one's opinion). But oftentimes, socio-technical systems are designed without considering these requirements. We strongly believe that within ethical realms, any individual—regardless of demographics or socio-economic status—should be able to freely carve out the interpersonal interactions they want on a system, or have a say over how companies use their data.

Research Directions

• Developing social media systems that respect the consent and agency of users, especially those who tend to have less power—to curate more empowering interpersonal interactions that are needed to create social change
• Studying and designing mechanisms that give people more agency over their data or creative work, as AI technologies are designed in a way to threaten it
• Studying how people perceive the socio-economic factors that enable tech companies to have a great deal of power, such as their business models