Archive

Compassion through Computation: Fighting Algorithmic Bias

I think the ques­tion I’m try­ing to for­mu­late is, how in this world of increas­ing opti­miza­tion where the algo­rithms will be accu­rate… They’ll increas­ing­ly be accu­rate. But their appli­ca­tion could lead to dis­crim­i­na­tion. How do we stop that?

Biased Data Panel Introduction

The pan­el will exam­ine how real world-biases and inequal­i­ty are repli­cat­ed and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly inte­grat­ed into neu­tral algo­rithms and databases.

Safiya Noble at Biased Data

I often try to tell peo­ple that Google is not pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion retrieval algo­rithms, it’s pro­vid­ing adver­tis­ing algo­rithms. And that is a very impor­tant dis­tinc­tion when we think about what kind of infor­ma­tion is avail­able in these corporate-controlled spaces.

An Xiao Mina at Biased Data

When we think about net­work graphs and we talk about how the net­work effects that make up an impor­tant part of how social move­ments and how infor­ma­tion is dis­trib­uted online, there’s this assump­tion in those visu­al­iza­tions that every node in that net­work is equal. But very often, and you can slice data in many dif­fer­ent way, the lan­guages that we speak actu­al­ly lim­it the net­works that we have access to and that we’re inter­act­ing with. 

Marika Cifor at Biased Data

What I’m argu­ing pri­mar­i­ly today is that focus­ing on ped­a­gogy is a key aspect of social jus­tice work, and that teach­ing crit­i­cal data lit­er­a­cy along with oth­er dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy skills is a key part of what we need to do.

Biased Data Panel Discussion

I think that we need a rad­i­cal design change. And I might ask if I were teach­ing an HCI class or design class with you, I would say, How are you going to design this so that not one life is lost?” What if that were the design imper­a­tive rather than what’s your IPO going to be?

Biased Data Panel Q&A

We’re los­ing our abil­i­ty to for­get the things that should be for­got­ten. Wait until you try to run for Senate or Congress, some of you in this room, and some pic­tures or text roll up.