Professor of Computer Science, Harvard University
Modern life is rapidly transitioning into a digital society in which all aspects of our economies and social interactions are dependent on cyberspace, a realm driven by the Internet, artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and other technological innovations. Progress in this field has led to dramatically higher convenience and efficiency, but it has also exacerbated ethical and social problems stemming from personal data leaks, surveillance, discriminatory decisions made by AI, and algorithmic domination of markets. Of particular concern are the violations of privacy and decline in the public benefits of cyberspace, benefits that should be shared by society as a whole but are rather being funneled toward certain companies and governments, which is exerting structural strain on the capitalist economy. Innovative technologies such as generative AI have further highlighted these problems in recent years, and have introduced new challenges related to information asymmetry, the allocation of ethical responsibility, and the guaranteeing social justice, all of which are difficult to resolve within existing legal frameworks and ethical standards.
In order to maintain the reliability and fairness of digital society under such conditions, it is essential to lay a theoretical foundation that not only provides an ethical and legal framework, but also mathematically quantifies the behavior of complex information systems and their societal impacts and allows variables to be controlled for. Professor Cynthia Dwork has addressed exactly these challenges through the construction of a mathematically rigorous framework that pioneered a new academic field that allows ethical issues to be addressed in a scientific way through the mathematical formalization of the principles of privacy protection, fairness, and decentralized trust. Her achievement is immensely important as it serves as a foundational theory for mitigating the external diseconomies caused by technological innovation, and for reconciling societal public interest with economic rationality.
By constructing mathematically rigorous theoretical frameworks addressing ethical challenges in digital society, Dwork’s contributions have been critical to the pioneering of an entirely new academic field. Of particular importance was her 2006 proposal on “differential privacy,” a groundbreaking concept that fundamentally transformed approaches to personal information protection in the Big Data era. Differential privacy is a mathematical formulation of the degree of privacy protection. It quantifies how much the outcomes of a data analysis may differ between two datasets that vary by the inclusion or exclusion of a particular individual’s data. The core of this theory lies in its mathematical expression of a quantitative bound on privacy risk, thereby clarifying the quantitative relationship between privacy protection and data accuracy. Furthermore, practical mechanisms were developed, such as the intentional addition of random noise, to achieve a desired level of privacy protection. Differential privacy has been adopted by major global IT companies such as Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and NTT Docomo, and was also employed in the 2020 census conducted in the USA. Its adoption has enabled companies and governments to obtain statistical data essential to the running of society, while safeguarding individual privacy.
Dwork had already foreseen the flood of spam emails in 1992 when she proposed an innovative mechanism that would prevent it by introducing a computational cost to send email. Known as “proof of work (PoW)”, the mechanism requires a certain amount of computational effort to be expended in order to perform an action, such as sending an email or recording a transaction. By introducing such an economic cost, it discourages the mass sending of spam emails. The idea was later adopted in blockchain, the tamper-resistant distributed ledger technology that emerged in 2009, and became the foundation for crypto assets. This innovation contributed to the establishment of democratic information-sharing systems that operate without reliance on any central authority.
In 2011, Dwork introduced the concept of “Fairness through Awareness,” which theoretically addressed issues of ethical bias that may arise from AI. Fairness through Awareness provides a mathematical framework for defining and ensuring fairness so that AI systems do not make socially inappropriate or unjustified decisions based on attributes such as race, gender, or age. Furthermore, Dwork refined the conceptual foundation of cryptographic security by formalizing resistance to ciphertext modification, thereby establishing a more rigorous framework for evaluating the security of encrypted communication. Her research is noteworthy for having anticipated the social and ethical risks that could arise from the continued development of information technologies, and for providing theoretical, mathematics-based solutions before such risks could have severe repercussions on society.
Dwork’s research is not merely abstract contemplation; it has been applied in actual technologies and products in ways that address societal needs. Differential privacy and other concepts Dwork pioneered now serve as the core theories for safeguarding the privacy and security of individuals, while simultaneously ensuring the reliability of our global information infrastructure and economic systems. Furthermore, her work is also groundbreaking for having allowed for the visualization of risks inherent in economic activities and algorithmic operations undertaken in cyberspace, for quantifying their impact scientifically, and for demonstrating methods to control the extent of that impact. In this way, Dwork’s research presents definitive, mathematical solutions to the critical challenges facing our digital society now and in the future, thereby bridging theory and practice and establishing a strong foundation for both academic research and society itself.
It is for these reasons that we believe the achievements of Professor Cynthia Dwork make her worthy of recognition as the recipient of the 2026 Japan Prize honoring achievements in the fields of Electronics, Information, and Communication.
