CS Seminar | AI Ecosystems: Structure, Strategy, Risk, and Regulation

Description

Benjamin Laufer, a doctoral candidate at Cornell Tech, will give a talk titled "AI Ecosystems: Structure, Strategy, Risk, and Regulation" for the Department of Computer Science.

This is a hybrid event; to attend virtually, use the Zoom link on the department event page.

Abstract:

Machine learning and AI are not standalone artifacts: They are ecosystems where foundation models are adapted and deployed through layered pipelines spanning developers, platforms, users, and regulators. This talk explores how the structure of these ecosystems shapes the distribution of value and risk, and determines system-level properties like safety and fairness. Benjamin Laufer begins with a game-theoretic model of the interaction between general-purpose producers and domain specialists, using it to examine how regulatory design shapes incentives and equilibrium behaviors. He then connects these formal insights to empirical measurements from 1.86 million open-source AI models, reconstructing lineage networks to quantify how behaviors and failures propagate through fine-tuning. Finally, turning from the descriptive structure of the ecosystem to the design of the algorithms themselves, Laufer describes his work in algorithmic fairness, framing the identification of less discriminatory algorithms as a search problem with provable statistical guarantees. He closes by outlining a forward-looking research agenda aimed at building technical infrastructure and policy mechanisms for steering AI ecosystems toward robust, accountable, and democratic outcomes.