Reflecting on Fall Quarter and Our Plans for Winter Quarter

Following a busy, virtual quarter at the PIT Lab, we took a step back to reflect on last quarter and outline plans for winter quarter. We appreciate your engagement with the Lab and we hope that you’ll continue to engage with our new themes, events, and projects this quarter.

Reflecting on Fall Quarter

Fall quarter was a whirlwind for the PIT Lab. After onboarding a team of over 60 students, we began to tackle new challenges and expand our work on campus. Our work has focused on three themes:

• Racial Justice and Diversity in Tech. The PIT Lab worked on multiple projects to advance conversations and catalyze action on racial justice and diversity in tech. Our members partnered with the think tank New America to study inequities in a public benefit program, wrote a widely-shared piece outlining the endpoint problem for people of color and women in tech, and hosted an event with Heather Shen, the co-founder of a startup that provides immersive learning experiences to help increase diversity and inclusion outcomes. The PIT Lab also partnered with the Stanford Debate Society and Stanford in Government to host a public debate on whether the government should increase the use of algorithms in decision-making; the debate paid close attention to the potential effects on bias and equity. Finally, we conducted a series of interviews to highlight non-traditional paths in the tech industry, the first of which is available here.
• Tech Recruiting on Campus. In collaboration with the Stanford Tech History Project, the PIT Lab is authoring a report on the status of tech recruiting on campus. This includes research into the historic and current presence of tech companies on campus. We also heard from Adrian Daub, Stanford professor and author of What Tech Calls Thinking, who shared his insights about what makes Silicon Valley so appealing to Stanford graduates. To further explore pathways into PIT careers, we worked closely with the Haas Center’s Cardinal Careers team. For example, we co-sponsored the panel How to Leverage Tech for the Public Interest that was moderated by Mehran Sahami and featured Amanda Renteria ’96 (CEO of Code for America), Kevin Barenblat ’97 (President of Fast Forward), and Dan Getelman (CTO of Remix).
• Bridging the Disciplines. Throughout our fall events, we highlighted individuals who bring various interdisciplinary lenses to their work. In our event with Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, California Supreme Court Justice and Stanford Professor, students learned about key problems and potential solutions in regulating AI systems. Students also engaged with Lauren Chambers, staff technologist at the ACLU of Massachusetts, who shared how she uses data-driven techniques to study police budgets and understand the spread of COVID-19 in prisons. In a talk with Daniel Ho, Director of the Stanford Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab, students learned about a number of opportunities and challenges for AI to improve government service delivery. Additionally, some of our members are creating an AI explainer for policymakers, taking an interdisciplinary approach to describing key questions to ask when grappling with AI systems used by hiring algorithms and wearable health technology.

Our Plans for Winter Quarter

This quarter, we’ll build on the work of fall quarter and explore new avenues within PIT at Stanford. To achieve this, our work will broadly fall under these four themes:

• Tackling Systemic Inequities in Tech
• Bridging the Fuzzy-Techie Divide
• Building PIT Career Pathways
• Embedding Democratic Values in Tech Policy

While the first three are expansions of existing themes, the last one is brand new. It focuses on the following question: How can governments help ensure that digital technologies reflect the values, priorities, and needs of the public? The recent attack on the U.S. Capitol demonstrated the urgency and importance of these issues. These attacks were instigated and organized on social media platforms, building on years of online disinformation and centuries of racism, misogyny, white supremacy, and other horrible manifestations of power in society. The new Congress and Administration will be grappling with policies to tackle some of the underlying issues, such as online disinformation and platform regulation, as well as a slew of other issues in tech policy. The PIT Lab hopes to learn from and contribute to these national conversations; over the next few weeks, our members will be writing about topics including tech antitrust, broadband accessibility, and AI regulation.

This quarter, we are also excited to launch our Frosh Fellowship, providing PIT education, mentorship, community, and hands-on experience to a motivated group of first-year students. To complement this, we’ll continue to highlight pathways into PIT careers and advocate for more PIT opportunities at Stanford.

Above all, we hope to focus on community building this quarter. Drawing on the Lab’s mission, we aim to continue building a diverse and interdisciplinary community at the PIT Lab. Our goal is to create a space that can foster serious contemplation and effective advocacy around PIT efforts. If you want to join our community, send us feedback, partner with us, or share ideas for projects, please drop us a line at stanfordpitlab@gmail.com!

Written by PIT Lab Co-Presidents Nik Marda and Constanza Hasselmann with contributions from members Keona Blanks and Senkai Hsia.