x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

Data Skeptic

The Data Skeptic Podcast features interviews and discussion of topics related to data science, statistics, machine learning, artificial intelligence and the like, all from the perspective of applying critical thinking and the scientific method to evaluate the veracity of claims and efficacy of approaches.

technology mathematics

All Episodes

34:54

Dark Patterns in Site Design

Data Skeptic ·

2022/12/05

Kerstin Bongard-Blanchy is a Research Associate at the University of Luxembourg. She joins us to discuss her study that investigated dark patterns in web designs. She discussed the results, the effect of dark patterns effect on users, whether an average user can detect them, and the way forward to a more ethical web space.

en

37:01

Internet Advertising Bureau Media Lab

Data Skeptic ·

2022/12/03

We are joined by Anthony Katsur, the CEO of IAB Tech Lab. Anthony discusses standards within the ad tech industry. He explained how IAB Tech Lab set and propagates global standards, actions to ensure compliance from advertisers, and industry trends for a more privacy-centric ad tech space.

en

39:47

Your Mouse Reveals Your Gender and Age

Data Skeptic ·

2022/11/28

When we navigate a webpage, it is fairly easy for our mouse movement to be tracked and collected. Today, Luis Leiva, a Professor of Computer Science discusses how these mouse tracking data can be used to predict age, gender and user attention. He also discusses the privacy concerns with mouse tracking data and possible ways it can be curtailed.

en

36:08

Measuring Web Search Behavior

Data Skeptic ·

2022/11/21

On the show, Aleksandra Urman and Mykola Makhortykh join us to discuss their work on the comparative analysis of web search behavior using web tracking data. They shared interesting results from their analysis, bordering around the user preferences for search engines, demographic patterns, and differences between how men and women surf the net.

en

41:56

StrategyQA and Big Bench

Data Skeptic ·

2022/11/18

Did Aristotle Use a Laptop? That's a question from the StrategyQA benchmark which highlights the stretch goals for current artificial intelligence systems. Answering a question like that requires several cognitive steps and reasoning. Constructing a dataset of similarly challenging questions is a major undertaking. On today's episode, Mor Geva returns to share details about the creation of StrategyQA and the larger Big Bench dataset it has been included in.

en

38:59

Ad Blockers Effect on News Consumption

Data Skeptic ·

2022/11/14

While at first glance, the use of ad blockers drops the revenue of news publishers, this may not be completely true. On the show today, Shunyao Yan, an Assistant Professor in Marketing at Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University, discussed the effect of ad blockers on news consumption and how ad blockers can potentially be helpful for news publishers.

en

24:04

Your Consent is Worth 75 Euros a Year

Data Skeptic ·

2022/11/07

People who do not want their data tracked and shared online can pay a token for a cookie paywall. But are the websites keeping to their side of the bargain? Victor Morel, a Postdoc candidate at the Chalmers University of Technology joins us to discuss his work around auditing the activities of cookie paywalls. He discussed the findings from his analysis and proffers some solutions to making cookie paywalls more transparent.

en

45:06

Automated Email Generation for Targeted Attacks

Data Skeptic ·

2022/10/31

The advancement of generative language models has been a force for good, but also for evil. On the show, Avisha Das, a post-doctoral scholar at the University of Texas Health Center, joins us to discuss how attackers use machine learning to create unsuspecting phishing emails. She also discussed how she used RNN for automated email generation, with the goal of defeating statistical detectors.

en

37:38

Tribal Marketing

Data Skeptic ·

2022/10/24

Peter Gloor, a Research Scientist at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, takes us on a new world of tribe classification. He extensively discussed the need for such classification on the internet and how he built a machine learning model that does it. Listen to find out more!

en

44:46

Nano-targetted Facebook Ads

Data Skeptic ·

2022/10/17

en

48:57

Debiasing GPT-3 Job Ads

Data Skeptic ·

2022/10/10

We hear about the impeccable achievements of GPT-3 models, but such large generative models come with their bias. On the show today, Conrad Borchers, a Ph.D. student in Human-Computer Interaction, joins us to discuss the bias in GPT-3 for job ads and how such large models can be de-biased. Listen to learn more!

en

41:58

ML Ops in Production

Data Skeptic ·

2022/10/06

Moses Guttman from Clear ML joins us to share insights about how organizations leveraging machine learning keep their programs on track. While many parallels exist between the software development life cycle (SWLC) and the machine learning development life cycle, successful deployments of ML in production have demonstrated that a unique set of tools is required. Moses and I discuss the emergence of ML Ops, success stories, and how modern teams leverage tools like Clear ML's open source solution to

en

35:20

Ad Network Tomography

Data Skeptic ·

2022/10/03

Data sharing in the ad tech space has largely been a black box system. While it is obvious the data is being collected, the data sharing process is obscure to users. On the show today, Maaz Bin Musa and Rishab, both researchers at the University of Iowa, speak about the importance of data transparency and their tool, ATOM for data transparency. Listen to find out how ATOM uncovers data-sharing relationships in the ad-tech space.

en

35:06

First Party Tracking Cookies

Data Skeptic ·

2022/09/26

When you accept cookies on a website, you cannot tell whether the cookies are used for tracking your personal data or not. Shaoor Munir’s machine learning model does that. On the show today, the Ph.D student at the University of California, discussed the world of first-party cookies and how he developed a machine learning model that predicts whether a first-party cookie is used for tracking purposes.

en

34:57

The Harms of Targeted Weight Loss Ads

Data Skeptic ·

2022/09/19

Liza Gak, a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, joins us to discuss her research on harmful weight loss advertising. She discussed how weight loss ads are not fact-checked, and how they typically target the most vulnerable. She extensively discussed her interview process, data analysis, and results. Listen for more!

en

35:05

Podcast Advertising

Data Skeptic ·

2022/09/12

Growing your podcast to the point of monetization is not a walk in the park. Today, Rob Walch, the VP of Podcast Relations at Libsyn talks about podcast advertising. He discussed how advertising works, how to grow your audience and some blueprints to being a successful podcaster. Listen for more.

en

40:46

Fairness in e-Commerce Search

Data Skeptic ·

2022/09/05

When we search for products in e-commerce stores, we do not care what goes on under the hood to generate the results. However, there may be an intentional algorithmic effort to gravitate us toward a particular product. On the show, today, Abhisek Dash and Saptarshi Ghosh discuss their research on fairness in the search result of Amazon smart speakers.

en

41:18

Fraudulent Amazon Reviewers

Data Skeptic ·

2022/08/29

Chances are that you have bought a product online majorly because of the reviews you saw. Unfortunately, not all reviews are genuine. Today, Rajvardhan Oak shares some insight from his research on fraudulent Amazon reviews. He explained the inner workings of fraudulent reviews and revealed key insights from his qualitative and quantitative study.

en

32:40

Ad Targeting in Amazon Smart Speakers

Data Skeptic ·

2022/08/22

While we give attention to textual data on the web, many do not know the unique power of echo interactions with smart devices for ad targeting. Today, our guest, Umar Iqbal joins us to discuss his study on using Amazon Smart Speakers for ad targeting. He gave interesting revelations about how voice data is captured and analysed for ad purposes. Listen to find out more.

en

34:09

Adwords with Unknown Budgets

Data Skeptic ·

2022/08/15

Rajan Udwani, an Assistant Professor at the University of California Berkeley joins us to discuss his work on AdWords with unknown budgets. He discussed the previous approaches to ad allocation, as well as his maiden approach that introduced randomization for better results. Listen for more.

en

599 results

Similar Podcasts

Lead With AI

Tamara Nall

Linux in the Ham Shack

Black Sparrow Media

Data Engineering Podcast

Tobias Macey

Eye On A.I.

Craig S. Smith

Reflections

Livewire Labs