In Episode 122, Quinn has big questions about AI ethics and, like many other situations, is left wondering: was Dr. Ian Malcolm right all along?
Our guest is Dr. Rumman Chowdury. She is the director of the Machine Ethics Transparency & Accountability (META) team at Twitter, where she’s helping to build a new ethical backbone into Twitter from the inside out.
On every social media platform you interact with on a regular basis, there is some type of machine learning or algorithm determining what you see and how you interact with it. Obviously, that is quite a responsibility to bear. We’ve seen algorithms in the past be straight-up racist, suck people into alt-right conspiracy funnels, and cater to the worst of our human tendencies.
These are all running on systems designed by humans – mostly white men – and that shows in the ways that they work. It’s Dr. Rumman’s job to clamp down on the worst of these to make algorithms that perform ethically – and she’s certainly got her work cut out for her.
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Important, Not Important Book Club:
• Against Purity (https://bookshop.org/shop/importantnotimportant) by Alexis Shotwell
• https://bookshop.org/shop/importantnotimportant
Links:
• rummanchowdhury.com (http://www.rummanchowdhury.com/)
• Twitter: @ruchowdh (http://twitter.com/ruchowdh)
• parity-fund.com (https://www.parity-fund.com/)
• startupsandsociety.medium.com (https://startupsandsociety.medium.com/launch-of-the-startups-society-initiative-d6cdfe11512f)
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• Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com (http://timblane.com/)
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