Mathematician
Author
Speaker
Noah Giansiracusa (PhD in math from Brown University) is a tenured associate professor of mathematics and data science at Bentley University, a business school near Boston. After publishing the book How Algorithms Create and Prevent Fake News in July 2021 (about which Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Romer said "It's a joy to read a book by a mathematician who knows how to write... There is no better guide to the strategies and stakes of this battle for the future"), Noah has gotten more involved in public writing/speaking and policy discussions concerning data-driven algorithms and their role in society. He's appeared on cable TV and BBC radio, written for Washington Post, Scientific American, TIME, Barron's, Boston Globe, Wired, Slate, Ms. Magazine, and Fast Company, and been quoted in a range of newspapers. Noah is currently working on a second book, a popular math book forthcoming with Riverhead Books (an imprint of Penguin).
Noah's CV/resume.
To discuss speaking engagements, please email: ngiansiracusa@bentley.edu
Follow me on Twitter @ProfNoahGian
Media
Op-Eds Authored:
Washington Post: Lawsuits aren't the best way to keep the tech industry honest, with Louisa Bartolo and Dominique Carlon, Nov 8, 2023.
Fast Company: We need a better way to find AI’s dangerous flaws, Oct 24, 2023.
Washington Post: Review: We can’t stop AI, but here’s how we might shape its effects, Sep 5, 2023.
Fast Company: Will AI wipe out humanity? It’s a story engineered to go viral, Jun 23, 2023.
Ms. Magazine: How AI Puts Elections at Risk—And the Needed Safeguards, with Mekela Panditharatne, Jun 17, 2023.
Scientific American: Three Easy Ways to Make AI Chatbots Safer, Mar 17, 2023.
TIME: Big Tech Hasn't Fixed AI's Misinformation Problem---Yet, with Gary Marcus, Feb 13, 2023.
Boston Globe: The Moral Failing of `Effective Altruism', with Emily Frey, Nov 22, 2022.
Slate: The Real Threat from AI Isn't Superintelligence. It's Gullibility, Oct 11, 2022.
Barron's: What Was Lost in the Debate about Sentient AI, with Paul Romer, Aug 7, 2022.
Tech Policy Press: In the Name of Openness, May 18, 2022.
Boston Globe: Facebook Could Make Its Algorithms Truly Work for You, Mar 24, 2022.
Slate: The Destabilizing Effects of Even Low-Quality Deepfakes, Mar 23, 2022.
Slate: Google Needs to Defund Misinformation, Nov 18, 2021.
Wired: Facebook Uses Deceptive Math To Hide Its Hate Speech Problem, Oct 15, 2021.
Fast Company: How internet pioneer Vint Cerf illuminated Google’s misinformation mess, Sep 24, 2021.
Interviews:
Yonhap News (Korean TV) 2-part documentary about fake news: Episode 1 (3:47 & 8:29) Nov 12, 2023, Episode 2 (4:52 & 12:27) Nov 20, 2023.
Gallup podcast with Mohamed Younis: The Public Is Skeptical About AI, but Do Opportunities Lie Ahead?, Sep 28, 2023.
NHK Japan (Japanese public TV news): Good Morning Japan, Jul 7, 2023.
Carl Higbie's Frontline: AI is more dangerous than just an economic problem, Jun 2, 2023.
Carl Higbie's Frontline: Does AI Need To Be Regulated? May 17, 2023.
Podcast "It Could Happen Here" with Robert Evans: How Scared Should You Be About AI?, Apr 4, 2023.
BBC Radio 4 "The Media Show": We Need to Talk About Gary, Mar 8, 2023.
Markup newsletter "Hello World" with Julia Angwin: Shopping for an Algorithm, May 7, 2022.
Slate podcast "What Next: TBD" with Seth Stevenson: Why the Zelensky Deepfake Failed, Mar 25, 2022.
Newsy (online news) video segment with Tyler Adkisson: Protecting Personal Data On Social Media, Nov 19, 2021.
Tech Policy Press podcast with Justin Hendrix: Seeing Inside the Algorithms (episode was included in the show's annual top 10 list), Oct 17, 2021.
TechCrunch with Danny Crichton: A Mathematician Walks Into a Bar (of Disinformation), Aug 20, 2021.
R Views (RStudio blog) with Joseph Rickert: A Mathematician’s Perspective on Topological Data Analysis (ranked top post for the year), Nov 14, 2018.
Profiles:
Bentley University: The Mathematics of Misinformation, Aug 19, 2021.
Bentley University: On the Case, Summer 2020.
Swarthmore college: NSF Grant Allows Mathematician Noah Giansiracusa to Study the Poetry of Pure Math, Sep 17, 2018.
Quoted in:
Business Insider: An image of Israel Kamakawiwoʻole shows Google search still can't tell AI-generated pictures apart from genuine ones, Nov 27, 2023.
Verdict: GlobalData’s takeaways from the OECD disinformation conference, Nov 23, 2023.
Tech Crunch: OpenAI, emerging from the ashes, has a lot to prove even with Sam Altman’s return, Nov 23, 2023.
Daily Courier: Elon Musk pleased with the result of OpenAI’s 'Game of Thrones', Nov 22, 2023.
Futurism: Is OpenAI Melting Down Because It Secretly Created Something Really Scary?, Nov 21, 2023.
Fast Company: New OpenAI CEO Emmett Shear’s time at Twitch gives clues to the future of the AI giant, Nov 20, 2023.
Daily Courier: Emmett Shear: Everything to know about Open AI's new CEO, Nov 20, 2023.
Fast Company: The latest we know about Sam Altman’s potential return to OpenAI after a chaotic weekend of boardroom drama, Nov 20, 2023.
The Street: Tesla chief Elon Musk targets Google, Microsoft and Sam Altman with latest AI move, Nov 7, 2023.
People Management: AI: how HR can ask (and answer) the right questions, Nov 7, 2023.
The i: ‘Lots of hype, no innovation’: Experts give verdict on Elon Musk’s Grok ChatGPT rival, Nov 6, 2023.
Nature: AI tidies up Wikipedia’s references — and boosts reliability, Oct 19, 2023.
New Scientist: Hundreds of chatbots could show us how to make social media less toxic, Oct 19, 2023.
New York Magazine: The Oppenheimer of Our Age, Sep 25, 2023.
Daily Beast: The Social Media Panicmongers Have Pivoted to AI, Sep 19, 2023.
Tech Brew: Americans side-eye AI in new Gallup poll, Sep 14, 2023.
Tom's Hardware: AI Lie: Machines Don’t Learn Like Humans, Sep 13, 2023.
Fast Company: Sen. Chuck Schumer’s summit is trying to solve AI’s biggest issues with the wrong guest list, Sep 13, 2023.
The Times: Why 2024’s presidential race will be the first ‘AI election’, Aug 13, 2023.
PBS Wisconsin: AI is starting to affect elections and Wisconsin has yet to take action, Aug 9, 2023.
The i: Why Elon Musk’s emergency tweet rationing is not a good sign for future of ‘decaying, dysfunctional’ Twitter, Jul 2, 2023.
The Street: DeepAI Founder and CEO Says a Sci-Fi Future Is On Its Way, Jun 25, 2023.
Washington Post: The AI debate is sweeping through the federal government, Jun 21, 2023.
The Street: Artificial Intelligence Isn't Going to Kill Everyone (At Least Not Right Away), Jun 13, 2023.
Wired: Bluesky’s Custom Algorithms Could Be the Future of Social Media, Jun 3, 2023.
The Street: Human Extinction From AI is Possible, Developers Warn, May 30, 2023.
Washington Post: U.S. officials say AI will be a big cyberthreat. How it’ll materialize is less clear., May 2, 2023.
Verge: AI is being used to generate whole spam sites, May 2, 2023.
Bloomberg: AI Chatbots Have Been Used to Create Dozens of News Content Farms, May 1, 2023.
CNBC: Microsoft tries to justify A.I.‘s tendency to give wrong answers by saying they’re ‘usefully wrong’, Mar 16, 2023.
Guardian: Everything you wanted to know about AI – but were afraid to ask, Feb 24, 2023.
New Delhi TV: Twitter Still Hasn’t Stopped Elon Musk Impersonators From Flourishing, Scamming, Apr 11, 2022.
New Delhi TV: Verified Facebook Page Impersonating Elon Musk Surfaces, Dec 23, 2021.
Agence France-Presse (AFP): World weighs laws to rein in mighty algorithms, Nov 19, 2021.
FiveThirtyEight: Facebook’s Algorithm Is Broken. We Collected Some Suggestions On How To Fix It. Nov 16, 2021.
Washington Post: Five points for anger, one for a ‘like’: How Facebook’s formula fostered rage and misinformation, Oct 26, 2021.
Financial Times: Deepfakes threaten to inflate the ‘liar’s dividend’, Jul 29, 2021.
Medium - The Startup: Can Artificial Intelligence Write Better Than You?, Dec 11, 2020.
Forbes: Turing Test At 70: Still Relevant For AI? Nov 27, 2020.
US News: What Can You Do With a Math Degree?, Aug 3, 2020.
Forbes: Reinforcement Learning: The Next Big Thing For Artificial Intelligence? Jun 5, 2020.
Forbes: AI Companies That Are Combating The COVID-19 Pandemic, Mar 28, 2020.
Forbes: Deep Learning: What You Need To Know, Mar 27, 2020.
Forbes: Artificial Intelligence: Can It Help Make Hollywood Blockbusters?, Jan 24, 2020.
with President Leonel Fernández of the Dominican Republic
with Robert McNamara
Speaking Engagements
OECD panel discussion at conference on Tackling Disinformation, Paris (Nov 13, 2023) — recording
Wistia webinar: More than meets the AI (Oct 31, 2023) — recording
Bentley University panel discussion on the Bentley-Gallup poll and AI (Oct 26, 2023) — recording
Global Forum Latin America and the Caribbean organized by President Leonel Fernandez of the Dominican Republic, panel discussion on AI, NYC (Sep 22, 2023) — recording
WTO training session on AI and trade (Sep 19, 2023)
Masterclass + Keynote address on AI and Freedom of Expression, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Macedonia (May 16-17, 2023) — recording
Open Data Science Conference in Boston, tutorial on deepfakes (May 9, 2023)
AMS Advocacy Training Session at the JMM in Boston, on a panel with Congressman Jerry McNerney (Jan 5, 2023)
Malta conference on Young People and Information (Nov 10-11) — recording 1, recording 2
Roundtable discussion on natural language generators at the Helix Center in NYC (Oct 15-16, 2022) — recording
Keynote address at conference on Trust and Disinformation at Stuttgart, Germany (Sep 1-2, 2022)
"Separating Fact From Fiction" conference at Copper Mountain Community College (Apr 30, 2022)
Open Data Science Conference in Boston, tutorial on deepfakes (Apr 19, 2022)
Harvard University Math Department seminar on The Mathematics of Misinformation (Apr 6, 2022)
Book discussion event with Columbia University's Anya Schiffrin (Mar 30, 2022) — recording
Media literacy curriculum development activities at Endicott College (Mar 25, 2022)
Guest appearance in course Technology, Media, & Democracy team taught by Mor Naaman (Cornell Tech), Justin Hendrix (NYU), David Carroll (The New School), Emily Bell (Columbia), Luke DuBois (NYU), Mark Hansen (Columbia), Jeremy Caplan (CUNY) (Feb 12, 2022)
San Francisco Bar Association Barristers Panel on Algorithmic Bias (Jan 11, 2022)
Open Data Science Conference, Responsible AI track: Workshop on Detecting Deepfakes (Nov 17, 2021)
Bentley Alumni association: Fake news: The Math Behind the Myths (Oct 20, 2021) — recording
Systematica Investments company off-site, organized by Leda Braga (Oct 2, 2021)
To inquire about booking me, please email: ngiansiracusa@bentley.edu
Books
How Algorithms Create and Prevent Fake News is available from Amazon and the publisher Apress (a division of Springer Nature) and other book sellers.
Blurbs
"It's a joy to read a book by a mathematician who knows how to write, even when it tells the discouraging tale of a business model – targeted digital advertising – that is hijacking the tech sector and destroying its soul. With no hype, little jargon, and precise explanations, the author describes both the conquests the ad-tech empire made by deploying more powerful algorithms and the preparations rebels are making to fight algorithms with algorithms. There is no better guide to the strategies and stakes of this battle for the future."
—Paul Romer, Nobel Laureate, University Professor in Economics at NYU, and former Chief Economist at the World Bank
"By explaining the flaws and foibles of everything from Google search to QAnon – and by providing level-headed evaluations of efforts to fix them – Noah Giansiracusa offers the perfect starting point for anyone entering the maze of modern digital media."
—Jonathan Rauch, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and contributing editor of The Atlantic
"Noah’s book brings the refreshingly impartial, data-driven content one gets from a lucid mathematics professor. The scale of reach enabled by technology means algorithms are the only viable operational approach. Mastering their limitations and moderating the commercial interests they serve is the responsibility of all those who work in data science. The effects of algorithms on the fabric of society could be comparable to carbon emissions on global warming. We have a chance to act early. Highly recommended reading."
—Leda Braga ("the most powerful woman in hedge funds"), founder and CEO of Systematica Investments
"You can read a hundred writers bemoaning the pollution of the infosphere; Noah Giansiracusa is one of the few who dares takes you behind the curtain to see the gears and guts of the fake news machine, and the competing algorithms that aim to counterbalance it."
—Jordan Ellenberg, bestselling author of How Not To Be Wrong and Shape and John D. MacArthur Professor of Mathematics, University of Wisconsin
"A wonderful book! Very approachable, very informative, a very important contribution to understanding the interaction of computing and misinformation."
—Grady Booch, Chief Scientist for Software Engineering at IBM Research
"The issues surrounding AI and misinformation are some of the most complicated – and important – we face. Giansiracusa helps us understand and confront them."
—Jonathan Zittrain, George Bemis Professor of International Law and Professor of Computer Science, Harvard University
"Imagine Genghis Khan with an AK-47 – that's what cutting-edge technology and computer algorithms have put in the hands of the next generation of liars, tyrants, and autocrats. Through the use of social media bots, deep fakes, and computer-assisted writing, fake news is now much more threatening and insidious than the "yellow journalism" of old; through the weaponization of technology, you won't even know that it's happening. Numerous TV pundits decry the assault on truth these days, but how many really understand its deep roots in information technology? To fight back, we not only have to go after the liars, but also the truth-assault weapons they have at their fingertips. Read this book to understand just how scary things have gotten over the last decade, but also how those of us who want to defend truth, facts, and evidence can employ the tools of technology to fight back."
—Lee McIntyre, author of Post-Truth
"Misinformation and deepfakes are the unique social-technological challenges of the era of social media and deep learning that every information consumer should be aware of. The book by Noah Giansiracusa provides a comprehensive yet concise account of this complex multi-facet problem, from its very cause to its impact and potential solutions. The book strikes a superb balance between readability and accuracy in the description of the core technologies."
—Siwei Lyu, SUNY Empire Innovation Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, University at Buffalo.
"AI is ushering in breakthroughs in just about every industry. Yet there is a dark side: fake news. So what can be done? Well, Noah Giansiracusa’s book is the answer. He provides an engaging look at fake news – along with the cutting-edge technologies like GPT-3 and deepfake GANs – and shows the various tools that can fight it. This book should be a priority for anyone looking at AI."
—Tom Taulli, author of Artificial Intelligence Basics: A Non-Technical Introduction
Reviews
Review-essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books by Pulitzer Prize finalist Nicholas Carr on Jonas Bendiksen's "Book of Veles" and the deepfakes chapter of my book.
Review for the Math Association for America (MAA) by Bill Wood
Short review in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) by Katelynn Kochalski
Recommended summer reading by the MAA
Papers
Pure Math
Algebraic Geometry
Fibonacci, golden ratio, and vector bundles
Mathematics 9 no. 4 (2021).Chow quotients of Grassmannians by diagonal subtori
with Xian Wu. Proceedings of the Facets in Algebraic Geometry conference in honor of William Fulton's 80th birthday, to appear (2020).Equations for point configurations to lie on a rational normal curve
with Alessio Caminata, Han-Bom Moon, and Luca Schaffler. Advances in Mathematics 340 (2018), 653-683.Modular interpretation of a non-reductive Chow quotient
with Patricio Gallardo. Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society 61 no. 2 (2018), 457-477.A simplicial approach to the effective cone of \bar{M}_{0,n}
with Brent Doran and Dave Jensen. International Mathematics Research Notices no. 2 (2017), 529-565.Projective linear configurations via non-reductive actions
with Brent Doran. Preprint on arXiv.The dual complex of \bar{M}_{0,n} via phylogenetics
Archiv der Mathematik 106 no. 6 (2016), 525-529.Factorization of point configurations, cyclic covers and conformal blocks
with Michele Bolognesi. Journal of the European Mathematical Society 17 (2015), 2453-2471.On Kapranov's description of \bar{M}_{0,n} as a Chow quotient
with W.D. Gillam. Turkish Journal of Mathematics 38 (2014), 625-648.GIT compactifications of M_{0,n} and flips
with Dave Jensen and Han-Bom Moon.Advances in Mathematics 248 (2013), 242-278.Conformal blocks and rational normal curves
Journal of Algebraic Geometry 22 (2013), 773-793.The cone of type A, level one conformal blocks divisors
with Angela Gibney. Advances in Mathematics 231 (2012), 798-814.GIT compactifications of M_{0,n} from conics
with Matthew Simpson. International Mathematics Research Notices no. 14 (2011), 3315-3334.Tropical Geometry/Matroids
The universal tropicalization and the Berkovich analytification
with J.H. Giansiracusa. Kybernetica 58 no.5 (2022), 790-815.Point configurations, phylogenetic trees, and dissimilarity vectors
with Alessio Caminata, Han-Bom Moon, and Luca Schaffler.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) 118 n. 12 (2021).Matroidal representations of groups
with Jacob Manaker. Advances in Mathematics 366 (2020).A module-theoretic approach to matroids
with Joshua Mundinger and Colin Crowley. Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra 224 no. 2 (2020), 894-916.A Grassmann algebra for matroids
with J.H. Giansiracusa.Manuscripta Mathematica 156 no. 1 (2018), 187-213.Equations of tropical varieties
with J.H. Giansiracusa.Duke Mathematics Journal 165 no. 18 (2016), 3379-3433.Miscellaneous
Experimental study of energy-minimizing point configurations on spheres
group project led by Henry Cohn. Experimental Mathematics 18 no. 3 (2009), 257-283.Applied/Interdisciplinary
Topological Data Analysis/Machine Learning
Persistent homology machine learning for fingerprint classification
with Bob Giansiracusa and Chul Moon. Proceedings of the 18th IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (IEEE ICMLA 2019), Boca Raton, FL, USA, 2019, 1219-1226.Persistence terrace for topological inference of point cloud data
with Chul Moon and Nicole Lazar. Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics 27 no. 3 (2018), 576-586.Math and Law
Branching on the bench: Quantifying division in the Supreme Court with trees
Constitutional Political Economy (2022), https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-022-09360-2.An evolutionary view of the U.S. Supreme Court
Mathematical and Computational Applications 26 no 2 (2021), 1-31.Computational geometry and the U.S. Supreme Court
with Cameron Ricciardi. Mathematical Social Sciences 98 (2019), 1-9.Spatial analysis of U.S. Supreme Court 5-to-4 decisions
with Cameron Ricciardi. Preprint on arXiv.with Cameron Ricciardi. American Mathematical Monthly 125 no. 10 (2018), 867-877.Teaching the quandary of statistical jurisprudence: a review-essay on the book Math on Trial
Journal of Humanistic Mathematics 6 no. 2 (2016), 207-224.Miscellaneous
Predicting financial crises with tree leaves
with Chase Cicchetti. Submitted.The mathematics of misinformation
Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 69 no. 10 (2022), 1707-1715.Predicting friendships and other fun machine learning tasks with graphs
American Mathematical Society Feature Column.Trust your instincts when opportunity arises
Notices of the American Mathematical Society 68 no. 3 (2021), 372-375.From Poland to Petersburg: The Banach-Tarski paradox in Bely's modernist novel
with Anastasia Vasilyeva. Annals of Language and Literature 4 no. 3 (2020), 1-8.Mathematical symbolism in a Russian literary masterpiece
with Anastasia Vasilyeva. The Mathematical Intelligencer 40 no. 3 (2018), 2-11.When mathematical reasoning gets murky
The Phoenix (op-ed in Swarthmore student newspaper, response to John Fan).Finding, and sharing, mathematical beauty in the world
Wisaarkhu Special volume 1 topic 2 (2020).with P. Kishor and O. Seneviratne.Accepted in, but not presented at, ACMGIS 2009. arXiv.CS/1304.5755