Victor Klockmann

Fri, January 28, 2022 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM CST

Registration

Victor Klockmann will be presenting the results of some recent experiments he conducted on Big Data and social responsibility. He finds that Big Data tended to increase the selfishness of participants and weakened prosocial preferences. 

Abstract

With Big Data, decisions made by machine learning algorithms depend on training data generated by many individuals. In an experiment, we identify the effect of varying individual responsibility for the moral choices of an artificially intelligent algorithm. Across treatments, we manipulated the sources of training data and thus the impact of each individual's decisions on the algorithm. Diffusing such individual pivotality for algorithmic choices increased the share of selfish decisions and weakened revealed prosocial preferences. This does not result from a change in the structure of incentives. Rather, our results show that Big Data offers an excuse for selfish behavior through lower responsibility for one's and others' fate.

Speaker Bio

Victor Klockmann joined the Center for Humans and Machines at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development Berlin as a Postdoctoral Researcher in May 2021. He finished his PhD in Economics at Goethe University Frankfurt in April 2021 with a thesis on "Human Biases and the Economics of New Technologies" about self-serving distortions in human thinking and the effect of technological advances on our decision making and the demand for skills on the labor market. Before achieving a Master’s degree in Quantitative Economics, he completed Bachelor and Master studies in Mathematics at Goethe University Frankfurt. In his research, Victor is primarily concerned with microeconomic and ethical implications of AI and new technologies, experimental economics as well as game theory.