In this Medium post, Tressie McMillian Cottom examines a recent public debate about a new research article on AI:
The issues of copyright, ethics, reproducibility, and practical significance are all challenges for data collection, systematic research and analysis in the digital era. Like most debates in social science the guiding concern should be does the practical significance of a study outweigh the risks to individuals and actors? Whether we always agree on the answer, it is a question sure to become ever more salient as we wrestle with how to study inequality in the digital society.