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Section: Application Domains

Computational Social Sciences

Participants: Philippe Caillou, Isabelle Guyon, Michèle Sebag, Paola Tubaro

Collaboration: Jean-Pierre Nadal (EHESS); Marco Cuturi, Bruno Crépon (ENSAE); Thierry Weil (Mines); Jean-Luc Bazet (RITM)

Computational Social Sciences (CSS) studies social and economic phenomena, ranging from technological innovation to politics, from media to social networks, from human resources to education, from inequalities to health. It combines perspectives from different scientific disciplines, building upon the tradition of computer simulation and modeling of complex social systems [99] on the one hand, and data science on the other hand, fueled by the capacity to collect and analyze massive amounts of digital data.

The emerging field of CSS raises formidable challenges along three dimensions. Firstly, the definition of the research questions, the formulation of hypotheses and the validation of the results require a tight pluridisciplinary interaction and dialogue between researchers from different backgrounds. Secondly, the development of CSS is a touchstone for ethical AI. On the one hand, CSS gains ground in major, data-rich private companies; on the other hand, public researchers around the world are engaging in an effort to use it for the benefit of society as a whole [119]. The key technical difficulties related to data and model biases, and to self-fulfilling prophecies have been discussed in section 3.1. Thirdly, CSS does not only regard scientists: it is essential that the civil society participate in the science of society [146].

Tao was involved in CSS for the last five years, and its activities have been strengthened thanks to P. Tubaro's and I. Guyon's expertises respectively in sociology and economics, and in causal modeling. Details are given in Section 7.3.