Julia Stoyanovich is an Assistant Professor at New York University in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Tandon School of Engineering, and the Center for Data Science. Julia's research focuses on responsible data management and analysis practices: on operationalizing fairness, diversity, transparency, and data protection in all stages of the data acquisition and processing lifecycle. She established the Data, Responsibly Consortium, and served on the New York City Automated Decision Systems Task Force, by appointment from Mayor de Blasio. In Spring 2019, Julia developed and is teaching a course on Responsible Data Science at NYU. In addition to data ethics, Julia works on management and analysis of preference data, and on querying large evolving graphs. She holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Columbia University, and a B.S. in Computer Science and in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Julia's work has been funded by the NSF, BSF and by industry. She is a recipient of an NSF CAREER award and of an NSF/CRA CI Fellowship.

When we hear the words “artificial intelligence”, it is hard not to relate to the pop culture and science fiction that so deeply influenced the way we perceive the world. Will then robots turn against us and destroy the world as we have seen in “Terminator“? Will we be imprisoned by machines in a fake reality called “The Matrix” or we will hunt them as in “Blade Runner”? Though science fictions inspired and keeps inspiring great scientists and technological progress, what is today’s state of the art of artificial intelligence? What’s behind it? When we read the news, we hear scary stories like social networks sucking in all our data with some (un)conscious consent, and turn them into weapons of mass influence able to drive what we decide to buy or to vote. We also hear overexcited stories of how the industry 4.0 will change everything. How big data and algorithms, perceived as the frontier of objectivity and rationalism, will make our societies better and greater. It is then easy to take sides based on emotions that such stories provoke, but what is really Artificial Inrellignece? What can it really do? How does it help us and how can it become harmful?