EconCS Seminar

 

Lecturer: 

Prof. Katrina Ligett (Hebrew University)

Title: 

Actually, data is a rival good

Abstract: 

There is a tendency in many fields, including computer science, economics, and industry, to model data as a non-rival good, meaning that one entity using a particular piece of data doesn't impinge on its use by others. Food is a classic rival good (if I eat the apple, you cannot); digital music is a classic non-rival good (my listening to the song has no effect on your listening experience). Data might, at first blush, seem more like digital music than like an apple. In this talk, I will give arguments from three fields---economics, privacy, and statistics---for why modeling data as non-rival is problematic, and will argue that we need a new paradigm.

The core of the economic argument is that generative AI has transformed the market for data, making competition (and rivalrousness) for and around data newly central. The privacy and statistical validity arguments rely on mathematical frameworks that help us understand how repeated uses of a dataset accumulate and interact. All of these arguments suggest new models and metaphors for data, and directions for further work.

Location: 

Room 130, Feldman Building, Edmond J. Safra Campus.

 

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