Alessandro Acquisti, professor at Carnegie Mellon University, is using his tenure as a Carnegie Corporation fellow to study the negative effects of data tracking—such as racial profiling, Post-Gazette.com reports. Cited as impetus was an October research initiative that found job candidates who identified as Muslim online were considered less for employment opportunities in neighborhoods with a majority of Republican voters. “If the market for information is not carefully regulated, big data can lead to a serious imbalance of power between individuals, whose information can be so easily exploited for profit, at times even unbeknownst to individuals, and companies, organizations and governments that have the upper hand,” said Laura Brandimarte, who coauthored a paper with Acquisti.
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