Emily is currently in her second year of the Common Law program at the University of Ottawa. Before law school, Emily completed a Master of Arts in History at the University of Ottawa with a focus on immigration policy in the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. She was first introduced to the area of tech law and policy through the Technoship Program, which offers opportunities for first year law students at the University of Ottawa to work with faculty members from the Centre for Law, Technology and Society. She was immediately drawn to research questions around the ethical development and application of artificial intelligence (AI) and is interested in the policy considerations of AI systems in the fields of health care and employment.

Emily points to an interesting parallel between Sentiment Analysis (SA) models and a clip from the first episode of the television show, “The Good Place” titled “How Your Life is Scored.” The premise is that every action you do gets a negative or positive score which then determines if you go to the “Good Place” when you die.

The description reminds her of an extreme version of SA models that classify text as positive or negative. At one point, Michael (the man explaining the system), states that it is a “perfectly accurate measuring system.” This leads into some obvious discussions on objectivity and measurement. Furthermore, Emily suggests that for anyone who has seen the show, there are some pretty good points on the implications of determining whether someone is “good” or “bad.”

She is excited to continue exploring these research questions with the CRAiEDL team!