Tanusree Sharma
Assistant Professor, Pennsylvania State University
Talk title
Decentralized Identity and Trust: Empirical Insights from Social Science Research to AI Governance
Abstract
Identity management has long been a cornerstone of user-facing systems such as social media, collaborative platforms, gaming, and social science research, and it is now increasingly integral to human-AI systems. Recent advances in AI have further amplified these risks, giving rise to the long-standing deceptive schemes and infiltrating elements of society where users’ signals are crucial.
In this talk, I will present the role of identity and trust in social science and decision research, particularly the challenges of aggregating authentic human data and interactions on established platforms like Prolific, CloudResearch, and MTurk, as well as in emerging frameworks for democratic and participatory AI. To demonstrate the applicability of decentralized trust and identity, I will introduce InclusiveAI - a decentralized AI governance platform to support transparency and trust in human deliberation, in the design of AI models and decision-making processes for sensitive domains.
Bio
Tanusree Sharma is an Assistant Professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Pennsylvania State University. Before joining Penn State, she earned my Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.
Sharma works at the intersection of privacy and security, AI, and blockchain, where she examines the question of how can we design secure systems that improve the quality of human interaction and ensure the authenticity of human data in digital ecosystems? Her research investigates the individual, social, and organizational implications of emerging technologies, such as AI, with particular emphasis on provenance, authenticity, and the embedding of public values across diverse contexts of human-AI interaction.