Meet the Scholars 2021: Eleanor Tursman

I first became conscious of the need for regulation of emerging technologies after a vivid encounter in a graduate seminar. Towards the end of the class, we began analyzing a paper which I wanted to discuss through an ethical lens—from my perspective, the authors had not considered the applications of their work and the potential harm it could cause. One of my classmates immediately rebutted with some amount of confusion, saying that knowledge should be pursued for its own sake, because how it is used is ultimately outside of a researcher’s control. This moment drove home a tension which I have continued to feel through my academic career: how do we balance the pursuit of knowledge with the ethical implications of said pursuit? 

This question, along with my desire to do work with large social impact, informed the avenues of research I pursued while studying computer vision in graduate school. I was, and am, a believer in the good that computer vision can bring to the world. I spent years researching deepfake detection–the detection of photo-realistic video manipulation of people–to combat the potential for deepfakes to spread misinformation. Meanwhile, I felt continually outpaced by a stream of researchers improving the quality of deepfake creation. To effectively counteract the dangers of this explosively expanding field of work, I needed to pivot. The technology policy space captured my imagination by presenting me with a way to promote the good that can come from these new technologies while also creating guardrails for their use to protect the public interest.

As a Congressional Innovation Scholar, I have the opportunities to leverage my training and knowledge to help promote science-based regulation of AI and other technologies that can be used to disenfranchise and discriminate against minority groups, threaten democracy, and propagate disinformation. I am excited to grow and learn through the fellowship as I continue to support the pursuit of knowledge while also promoting a more equitable and better informed society.