Stanford
University
  • Stanford Home
  • Maps & Directions
  • Search Stanford
  • Emergency Info
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy
  • Copyright
  • Trademarks
  • Non-Discrimination
  • Accessibility
© Stanford University.  Stanford, California 94305.
David G. Robinson | Voices in the Code: A Story About People, Their Values, and the Algorithm They Made | Stanford HAI
Skip to content
  • About

    • About
    • People
    • Get Involved with HAI
    • Support HAI
    • Subscribe to Email
  • Research

    • Research
    • Fellowship Programs
    • Grants
    • Student Affinity Groups
    • Centers & Labs
    • Research Publications
    • Research Partners
  • Education

    • Education
    • Executive and Professional Education
    • Government and Policymakers
    • K-12
    • Stanford Students
  • Policy

    • Policy
    • Policy Publications
    • Policymaker Education
    • Student Opportunities
  • AI Index

    • AI Index
    • AI Index Report
    • Global Vibrancy Tool
    • People
  • News
  • Events
  • Industry
  • Centers & Labs
Navigate
  • About
  • Events
  • AI Glossary
  • Careers
  • Search
Participate
  • Get Involved
  • Support HAI
  • Contact Us

Stay Up To Date

Get the latest news, advances in research, policy work, and education program updates from HAI in your inbox weekly.

Sign Up For Latest News

eventSeminar

David G. Robinson | Voices in the Code: A Story About People, Their Values, and the Algorithm They Made

Status
Past
Date
Wednesday, March 15, 2023 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PST/PDT
Location
Hybrid
Overview
Watch Event Recording

Policymakers and the public often find algorithms to be complex, opaque and intimidating—and it can be tempting to pretend that hard moral questions have simple technological answers. But that approach leaves technical experts holding the moral microphone, and it stops people who lack technical expertise from making their voices heard.

Overview
Watch Event Recording
Share
Link copied to clipboard!
Event Contact
Madeleine Wright
mwright7@stanford.edu

Related Events

Alexandr Lenk & Arvind Karunakaran | Industry Conversation with Instacart
SeminarSep 23, 202612:00 PM - 1:15 PM
September
23
2026

This seminar pairs a case study of AI diffusion with an organizational approach to technological changes in the workplace.

Seminar

Alexandr Lenk & Arvind Karunakaran | Industry Conversation with Instacart

Sep 23, 202612:00 PM - 1:15 PM

This seminar pairs a case study of AI diffusion with an organizational approach to technological changes in the workplace.

Daniel Zhang, Caroline Meinhardt, Jiajun Wu, and Russell Wald | The World Model and Spatial Intelligence Era: Governing AI Beyond Language
SeminarSep 30, 20263:00 PM - 4:15 PM
September
30
2026

As AI moves beyond language into systems that can perceive, understand, and act in the physical world, a new frontier is emerging: world models—AI systems that build and maintain working representations of real environments to predict how they change in response to action.

Seminar

Daniel Zhang, Caroline Meinhardt, Jiajun Wu, and Russell Wald | The World Model and Spatial Intelligence Era: Governing AI Beyond Language

Sep 30, 20263:00 PM - 4:15 PM

As AI moves beyond language into systems that can perceive, understand, and act in the physical world, a new frontier is emerging: world models—AI systems that build and maintain working representations of real environments to predict how they change in response to action.

Empirical Methods in the Age of AI Conference
ConferenceOct 02, 2026
October
02
2026

Save the Date. Artificial intelligence is transforming how researchers collect, analyze, and learn from data. As AI systems become increasingly integrated into scientific discovery, business decision-making, and policy analysis, they are reshaping both the questions researchers can ask and the methods they use to answer them.

Event

Empirical Methods in the Age of AI Conference

Oct 02, 2026

Save the Date. Artificial intelligence is transforming how researchers collect, analyze, and learn from data. As AI systems become increasingly integrated into scientific discovery, business decision-making, and policy analysis, they are reshaping both the questions researchers can ask and the methods they use to answer them.

Today, policymakers and scholars are seeking better ways to share the moral decision-making within high stakes software — exploring ideas like public participation, transparency, forecasting, and algorithmic audits. But there are few real examples of those techniques in use.

In Voices in the Code, scholar David G. Robinson tells the story of how one community built a life-and-death algorithm in an inclusive, accountable way. Between 2004 and 2014, a diverse group of patients, surgeons, clinicians, data scientists, public officials and advocates collaborated and compromised to build a new transplant matching algorithm – a system to offer donated kidneys to particular patients from the U.S. national waiting list.Drawing on interviews with key stakeholders, unpublished archives, and a wide scholarly literature, Robinson shows how this new Kidney Allocation System emerged and evolved over time, as participants gradually built a shared understanding both of what was possible, and of what would be fair. Robinson finds much to criticize, but also much to admire, in this story. It ultimately illustrates both the promise and the limits of participation, transparency, forecasting and auditing of high stakes software. The book’s final chapter draws out lessons for the broader struggle to build technology in a democratic and accountable way.

Link to purchase Dr. Robinson's book

Speaker
David G. Robinson
Visiting Scholar, Social Science Matrix, University of California, Berkeley; Faculty, Apple University