Onur Bakiner, PhD

The recent wave of Artificial Intelligence (AI) development, driven by the availability of massive digital data and computing power to process machine learning (ML) algorithms, promises to transform healthcare and caregiving, finance, warfare, and transportation, among other sectors. Onur’s project pays special attention to the generation and reproduction of negative social impact through AI, which refers to all socially and politically relevant implications of AI deemed undesirable or illegitimate by at least some stakeholders. The project’s overarching goal is to learn about the background, worldviews, workplace cultures, and everyday professional practices of AI developers to explain how and why AI tools are produced, and understand better the negative social impact resulting from their use.

During the fellowship, Onur will investigate legal and organizational remedies to mitigate and eliminate negative social impact in AI. He will analyze the interplay of individual (software developers), organizational (software firms and teams within them), and political-institutional (national regulations) factors to identify the roots of rights-threatening bias, and present a list of guiding principles and best practices concerning the production, deployment and regulation of AI tools by firms, governments, and non-governmental organizations.

Recent Research:

Bakiner, Onur (2020).     “Endogenous Sources of Judicial Power: Parapolitics and the Supreme Court of Colombia,” Comparative Politics 52(4): 603-624.

Bakiner, Onur (2019). "Why do Peace Negotiations Succeed or Fail? Legal Commitment, Transparency and Inclusion during Peace Negotiations in Colombia (2012-2016) and Turkey (2012- 2015),” Negotiation Journal 35(4): 471-513.

Yaylaci, Sule, and Bakiner, Onur (2019). “Casualties and Support for Violent Conflict in Civil Wars,” Civil Wars 20(4): 555-586.

Bakiner, Onur (2016). “Judges Discover Politics: Sources of Judges’ Off-bench Mobilization in Turkey,” Journal of Law and Courts 4(1): 131-157.

Bakiner, Onur (2015).     Truth Commissions: Memory, Power, and Legitimacy (University of Pennsylvania Press).