The LCFI website uses cookies only for anonymised website statistics and for ensuring our security, never for tracking or identifying you individually. To find out more, and to find out how we protect your personal information, please read our privacy policy.

The Methodology and Ethics of Targeting - Public Lecture

9 May 2019

Governments and companies can now model and predict the beliefs, preferences, and behaviour of small groups and even individuals - allowing them to “target” interventions, messages, and services much more narrowly. These new forms of targeting present huge opportunities to make valuable interventions more effective, for example by delivering public services to those most in need of them. However, the use of more fine-grained information about individuals and groups also raises huge risks, challenging key notions of privacy, fairness, and autonomy.

On the evening of May 9th, we will hold a public event on the methodology and ethics of targeting (i.e. using machine learning and data science to personalise products, advice, and services, public or private) in the Winstanley Lecture Hall. This will include a lecture by David Stillwell (University Lecturer in Big Data Analytics & Quantitative Social Science and Deputy Director of the Psychometrics Centre), who will speak about the use of psychometrics in personalised targeting, followed by a panel discussion.

Registration for the lecture is now open, please click here to book your free ticket.

The public event will be followed by a closed one-day workshop, on May 10th, in which we will discuss these issues in greater detail.