Jonathan L. Zittrain

Bio: Jonathan L. Zittrain is an academic researcher from Harvard University. The author has contributed to research in topics: The Internet & Cyberspace. The author has an hindex of 29, co-authored 92 publications receiving 5443 citations. Previous affiliations of Jonathan L. Zittrain include University of Oxford & Fordham University.

The science of fake news

Abstract: The rise of fake news highlights the erosion of long-standing institutional bulwarks against misinformation in the internet age. Concern over the problem is global. However, much remains unknown regarding the vulnerabilities of individuals, institutions, and society to manipulations by malicious actors. A new system of safeguards is needed. Below, we discuss extant social and computer science research regarding belief in fake news and the mechanisms by which it spreads. Fake news has a long history, but we focus on unanswered scientific questions raised by the proliferation of its most recent, politically oriented incarnation. Beyond selected references in the text, suggested further reading can be found in the supplementary materials.

The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It

Abstract: This extraordinary book explains the engine that has catapulted the Internet from backwater to ubiquityand reveals that it is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. With the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lockdown, ending its cycle of innovationand facilitating unsettling new kinds of control.IPods, iPhones, Xboxes, and TiVos represent the first wave of Internet-centered products that cant be easily modified by anyone except their vendors or selected partners. These tethered appliances have already been used in remarkable but little-known ways: car GPS systems have been reconfigured at the demand of law enforcement to eavesdrop on the occupants at all times, and digital video recorders have been ordered to self-destruct thanks to a lawsuit against the manufacturer thousands of miles away. New Web 2.0 platforms like Google mash-ups and Facebook are rightly toutedbut their applications can be similarly monitored and eliminated from a central source. As tethered appliances and applications eclipse the PC, the very nature of the Internetits generativity, or innovative characteris at risk.The Internets current trajectory is one of lost opportunity. Its salvation, Zittrain argues, lies in the hands of its millions of users. Drawing on generative technologies like Wikipedia that have so far survived their own successes, this book shows how to develop new technologies and social structures that allow users to work creatively and collaboratively, participate in solutions, and become true netizens.

Adversarial attacks on medical machine learning

Abstract: Emerging vulnerabilities demand new conversations With public and academic attention increasingly focused on the new role of machine learning in the health information economy, an unusual and no-longer-esoteric category of vulnerabilities in machine-learning systems could prove important. These vulnerabilities allow a small, carefully designed change in how inputs are presented to a system to completely alter its output, causing it to confidently arrive at manifestly wrong conclusions. These advanced techniques to subvert otherwise-reliable machine-learning systems—so-called adversarial attacks—have, to date, been of interest primarily to computer science researchers (1). However, the landscape of often-competing interests within health care, and billions of dollars at stake in systems' outputs, implies considerable problems. We outline motivations that various players in the health care system may have to use adversarial attacks and begin a discussion of what to do about them. Far from discouraging continued innovation with medical machine learning, we call for active engagement of medical, technical, legal, and ethical experts in pursuit of efficient, broadly available, and effective health care that machine learning will enable.

The Generative Internet

Abstract: The generative capacity for unrelated and unaccredited audiences to build and distribute code and content through the Internet to its tens of millions of attached personal computers has ignited growth and innovation in information technology and has facilitated new creative endeavors. It has also given rise to regulatory and entrepreneurial backlashes. A further backlash among consumers is developing in response to security threats that exploit the openness of the Internet and of PCs to third-party contribution. A shift in consumer priorities from generativity to stability will compel a response from regulators and markets and, if unaddressed, could prove decisive in closing today's open computing environments. This Article explains why PC openness is as important as network openness, as well as why today's open network might give rise to unduly closed endpoints. It argues that the Internet is better conceptualized as a generative grid that includes both PCs and networks rather than as an open network indifferent to the configuration of its endpoints. Applying this framework, the Article explores ways - some of them bound to be unpopular among advocates of an open Internet represented by uncompromising end-to-end neutrality - in which the Internet can be made to satisfy genuine and pressing security concerns while retaining the most important generative aspects of today's networked technology. This is a working paper. The final version of the paper may be found online without registration or charge at http://www.harvardlawreview.org/issues/119/may06/zittrain.pdf.

Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace

Abstract: Internet filtering, censorship of Web content, and online surveillance are increasing in scale, scope, and sophistication around the world, in democratic countries as well as in authoritarian states. The first generation of Internet controls consisted largely of building firewalls at key Internet gateways; China's famous "Great Firewall of China" is one of the first national Internet filtering systems. Today the new tools for Internet controls that are emerging go beyond mere denial of information. These new techniques, which aim to normalize (or even legalize) Internet control, include targeted viruses and the strategically timed deployment of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, surveillance at key points of the Internet's infrastructure, take-down notices, stringent terms of usage policies, and national information shaping strategies. Access Controlled reports on this new normative terrain. The book, a project from the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), a collaboration of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies, Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and the SecDev Group, offers six substantial chapters that analyze Internet control in both Western and Eastern Europe and a section of shorter regional reports and country profiles drawn from material gathered by the ONI around the world through a combination of technical interrogation and field research methods. Chapter authors: Ronald Deibert, Colin Maclay, John Palfrey, Hal Roberts, Rafal Rohozinski, Nart Villeneuve, Ethan Zuckerman Information Revolution and Global Politics series

Research Commentary---The New Organizing Logic of Digital Innovation: An Agenda for Information Systems Research

Abstract: In this essay, we argue that pervasive digitization gives birth to a new type of product architecture: the layered modular architecture. The layered modular architecture extends the modular architecture of physical products by incorporating four loosely coupled layers of devices, networks, services, and contents created by digital technology. We posit that this new architecture instigates profound changes in the ways that firms organize for innovation in the future. We develop (1) a conceptual framework to describe the emerging organizing logic of digital innovation and (2) an information systems research agenda for digital strategy and the creation and management of corporate information technology infrastructures.

Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): Concepts, Taxonomies, Opportunities and Challenges toward Responsible AI.

Abstract: In the last years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has achieved a notable momentum that may deliver the best of expectations over many application sectors across the field. For this to occur, the entire community stands in front of the barrier of explainability, an inherent problem of AI techniques brought by sub-symbolism (e.g. ensembles or Deep Neural Networks) that were not present in the last hype of AI. Paradigms underlying this problem fall within the so-called eXplainable AI (XAI) field, which is acknowledged as a crucial feature for the practical deployment of AI models. This overview examines the existing literature in the field of XAI, including a prospect toward what is yet to be reached. We summarize previous efforts to define explainability in Machine Learning, establishing a novel definition that covers prior conceptual propositions with a major focus on the audience for which explainability is sought. We then propose and discuss about a taxonomy of recent contributions related to the explainability of different Machine Learning models, including those aimed at Deep Learning methods for which a second taxonomy is built. This literature analysis serves as the background for a series of challenges faced by XAI, such as the crossroads between data fusion and explainability. Our prospects lead toward the concept of Responsible Artificial Intelligence, namely, a methodology for the large-scale implementation of AI methods in real organizations with fairness, model explainability and accountability at its core. Our ultimate goal is to provide newcomers to XAI with a reference material in order to stimulate future research advances, but also to encourage experts and professionals from other disciplines to embrace the benefits of AI in their activity sectors, without any prior bias for its lack of interpretability.

Organizing for Innovation in the Digitized World

Abstract: Our era is one of increasingly pervasive digital technologies, which penetrate deeply into the very core of the products, services, and operations of many organizations and radically change the nature of product and service innovations. The fundamental properties of digital technology are reprogrammability and data homogenization. Together, they provide an environment of open and flexible affordances that are used in creating innovations characterized by convergence and generativity. An analysis of convergence and generativity observed in innovations with pervasive digital technologies reveals three traits: (1) the importance of digital technology platforms, (2) the emergence of distributed innovations, and (3) the prevalence of combinatorial innovation. Each of the six articles in this special issue relates to one or more of these three traits. In this essay, we explore the organizational research implications of these three digital innovation traits and identify research opportunities for organization science scholars. Examples from the articles in this special issue on organizing for innovation in the digitized world are used to demonstrate the kind of organizational scholarship that can faithfully reflect and inform innovation in a world of pervasive digital technologies.