Press Release: DataEthics4Allᵀᴹ Launches STEAM in AIᵀᴹ College Prep Research and Buildᵀᴹ Program
Press Release: DataEthics4All Launches STEAM in AI College Prep Research and Build Program - An Experiential Learning and Career Mentoring Program for High School Students by College Students in the fields of Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and STEAM that they’d
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After the success of our STEAM in AI College Prep Essay Writing Summer Camp, it gives us great pleasure to announce the launch of
DataEthics4All’s STEAM in AIᵀᴹ College Prep Research and Buildᵀᴹ Program.
An Experiential Learning and Career Mentoring Program for High School Students by College Students in the fields of Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and STEAM that they’d perhaps pursue as a career.
The traditional definition of STEAM means Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math.
DataEthics4All’s definition of STEAM also includes Sociology, Technical Education, Ethics, Analytics and Mentoring!
“Today, there exist many new linear as well as non-linear STEAM career paths that we’d like our students to be aware of and choose a career in STEAM whether or not Math, Science or Coding are their biggest passions.
DataEthics4All’s STEAM in AI Movement is Paving a Path to Success by Bridging the Data, AI and Ethics Literacy Gap to
Raise the next generation of Ethics 1st Tech Champions!”
Shilpi Agarwal, Founder and CEO, DataEthics4All Foundation.
“DataEthics4All’s STEAM in AIᵀᴹ College Prep Research and Build Program provides High School Students a chance to explore STEAM and AI career paths through hands on research and build projects and be mentored by College Students.
DataEthics4All Foundation is truly excited to launch this unique program that can provide students an insight into a career of their dreams.” ~Shilpi
DataEthics4All’s STEAM in AI Program supports 8 UN Sustainability Goals:
No Poverty, Zero Hunger, Good Health, Quality Education, Gender Equality, Decent Work and Economic Growth, Reduced Inequalities, and Partnerships for the Goals.
Our National Nonprofit 501(c)(3) will provide Scholarships for the STEAM in AI Program to Students and Families at no cost.
Sign up to Partner with us to bring the much needed STEAM in AIᵀᴹ!!
DataEthics4All partners with Oxford University Internship Office for the Second year!
Big News: DataEthics4All partners with Oxford University Internship Office, June 23rd for the Summer Internship Programme 2022. We are proud to announce that DataEthics4All has partnered with Oxford Univesity Internship Office to bring summer internship opportunities to students who are passionate
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We are proud to announce that DataEthics4All is partnering with Oxford University Internship Office for the second year in a row!
Alongside the Careers Service we will be bringing Summer Internship opportunities to Oxford students who are passionate about the ethical use of Data in Technology and driven to change the status quo.
The Oxford Internship Office was established to provide research and professional work experience placements exclusively to Oxford students. It also provides associate funding and support. To help their students develop real-world opportunities, the Office partners with organizations locally and globally to provide invaluable experience to their students.
“DataEthics4All is beyond thrilled to be working with the Oxford Internship Office in bringing Internship opportunities to their 24,000 student body. This certainly helps in solidifying the mission of DataEthics4All as a truly global organization working towards breaking barriers of entry and building cognitive diversity in Tech!”
~ Shilpi Agarwal, Founder of DataEthics4All.
We hosted 16 Oxford Scholars just last year alone and are proud to be recognized in their Summer Internship Experience Magazine. So far in 2022 we have hosted 8 Oxford Scholars and are incredibly honoured to be participating in this year’s 2022 Summer Internship Program.
Founded in 2020, DataEthics4All’s Mission is to raise awareness on the Ethical use of Data, build the Next Generation of Inclusive AI and be a Catalyst in building a more Equitable, Inclusive, Culture Rich, Just, and Ethical Society.
“Our partnership with the Oxford Internship Office brings us one step closer in realizing that mission.” ~ Shilpi Agarwal, Founder of DataEthics4All.
Contact [email protected] to learn more.
Press Release: DataEthics4Allᵀᴹ Launches College Prep Essay Writing Summer Camp for STEAM in AI
Press Release: DataEthics4Allᵀᴹ Launches Essay Writing Summer Camp for STEAM in AI, for Rising High School Seniors, to learn how to get organized, write the essays and get a head start on their College Applications this Summer.
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Announcing our STEAM in AI: FREE College Application Essay Writing Summer Camp for rising high school seniors!
Mon, Jul 18 at 11:00pm to
Sat, Jul 23 at 1:00am WEST
We’re hosting a College Application Essay Writing Summer Camp for Rising High School Seniors, to learn how to get organized, write the essays and get a head start on their College Applications this Summer.
The Mission of the DataEthics4All Foundation, a Presidential Volunteer Service Award (PVSA) Certifying Organization is to raise awareness on the ethical use of the entire end to end data pipeline including AI, Break Barriers of Entry in Tech and Raise the next generation of Ethics 1st Champions.
Our STEAM in AI movement helps high school students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds the support they need to choose STEAM and AI careers such as the support of a Tech Community of global leaders, Town Hall discussions across generations on important Data & AI policies and challenges, a mentoring ecosystem, internship, college essay writing camps, career exploration talks, leadership and volunteering opportunities, the opportunity to write, do research and get published as well as the opportunity to earn the Presidential Volunteer Service Award for their community service.
The Camp will be taught by College Application Coach Jody Cohan-French, author of the Amazon bestseller THE WRITE WAY INTO COLLEGE.
Students from low income families can attend this camp for Free ($499 value) and change their life trajectory.
We also plan to focus on scholarship essays for students applying to State Universities, waive the GPA requirement of the Program to accommodate all students and even accept Dreamers who may not be eligible for other Government funded education programs.
A great zero cost option for Students to learn how to get organized, write the essays and get a head start on their College Applications this Summer.
Get all the details and Register today at:
https://steaminai.org/
Help us connect with Students, School Administrators, Educators and Parents. Sign up or Apply for Scholarship!!
Help DataEthics4All Change the Life of a Student!!
A small change with a Big Impact.
Want to Support and Join in on the Movement?
Donate
Every Child deserves the chance to go to College!
Contact [email protected] to learn more.
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An Evaluation of the Job Landscape and Trends in AI Ethics
RESEARCHERS
Quentin J Louis, Joshua Walker, Katherine Lai, Victoria Matthews, Kitty Atwood
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Susanna Raja
DESIGNER
Ayomikun Bolaji
Contents.
Executive Summary.
Top 3 Recommendations.
Trends in AI and Ethics.
Although a contested and evolving term that is often used generally to describe technological revolution in society, AI can be defined as technology that can independently perform complex intelligent tasks, which were previously limited to human cognition.
(The Global Landscape of AI Ethics Guidelines, 2019;
A Unified Framework of Five Principles for AI in Society, 2019)
The explosion of interest in AI technology and discourse has been reflected in a growing hiring trend in AI-related jobs.
In Indeed’s ‘The Best Jobs in the US: 2019’ editorial, 3 of the top 15 jobs were AI roles.
(Indeed, 2019)
The highest ranked of these–Machine Learning Engineer–was the highest positioned of all US jobs, with a 344% growth in the number of job postings for the role between 2015-2018.
(Indeed, 2019).
The growth of AI has led to considerable debate surrounding issues such as the lack of accountability, discriminatory bias and malevolent use of AI systems. (The Global Landscape of AI Ethics Guidelines, 2019)
In response to this, there has been a growth in AI ethics initiatives which aim to create a framework for developing standards for AI implementation across different sectors and industries. (A Unified Framework of the Five Principles for AI in Society, 2019)
There remains considerable disagreement over what constitutes ethical AI. (The Global Landscape of AI Ethics Guidelines, 2019).
In response to the confusion between definitions, meta-analyses have been carried out to characterise common key principles of AI ethics. (AI Now 2019 Report)
A Unified Framework of the Five Principles for AI in Society, 2019 establish five key principles that are common amongst published guidelines:
These themes are also increasingly adopted by the private sector, which has seen a growing adoption of AI principles since 2015. (The Global Landscape of AI Ethics Guidelines, 2019)
2018 has been identified as a turning point for corporate AI ethics initiatives, with many high profile companies such as Google, Facebook and IBM publishing ethics guidelines at this time. (AI Index 2021 Report)
Increased adoption of ethics principles corresponds to an increased ethical awareness of employees;
A survey of nearly 900 executives across different sectors in 10 countries in 2020 found that:
accounting to respective increases in awareness of 46%, 33% and 30% from 2019.
(Capgemini: AI and the Ethical Conundrum, 2020)
Deloitte’s third ‘State of AI in the Enterprise’ report surveyed nearly
3000
executives of firms and organisations that have adopted AI approaches, finding that 95% of respondents were concerned about ethical risks of AI (Deloitte: State of AI in the Enterprise, Third Edition, 2020).
Survey results also suggest that there are a growing number of job roles which explicitly aim to address the question of AI ethics;
For example, Capgemini found that
63%
49%
% of IT and AI data professionals
% of sales and marketing executives
surveyed could point to a management role responsible and accountable for ethical AI issues.
(Capgemini: AI and the Ethical Conundrum, 2020)
New job titles such as ‘Chief AI Ethics Officer’ and ‘AI Ethicist’ are emerging, although AI ethics is often corporated into other executive roles, such as CDO and CAO (Are you asking too much of your Chief Data Officer? by Davenport and Bean, 2020; Forbes: Rise of the Chief Ethics Officer, 2019).
Public Awareness and High Profile Examples of Corporate AI Ethics.
Alongside increased corporate awareness of AI ethics issues, public awareness has also grown. The 2021 AI Index report surveyed popular news topics, finding that themes such as AI ethics guidance, research and education were particularly popular, as well as ethical concerns related to facial recognition software and algorithmic bias. (2021 AI Index Report)
However, rising public awareness raises the concern that firms may act performatively to include AI ethics roles in a form of ‘ethics-washing’, while neglecting the necessary integrated, structural change.
(IBM: Everyday Ethics for Artificial Intelligence)
Many high profile roles have gained attention, such as the Bank of America’s ‘Enterprise Data Governance Executive’ and Google’s Ethical AI team.
(Schrag, 2018)
Concerns that firms are using these roles simply to comply with ethical obligations peaked when Google dismissed two members of its Ethical AI team following a report discussing AI bias. (Naughton, 2021)
The 2021 AI Index reveals that this event received particular attention in the media, naming it the second most popular news topic related to ethical AI after the release of the European Commission’s white paper on AI. (2021 AI Index Report)
These high profile cases suggest there may be a conflict between the actions driven by the increasing pressure for firms to adhere to ethical guidelines, and the change needed to ensure truly ethical practice.
Key Issues in AI Ethics.
Despite increasing acknowledgement of the importance of ethics, there remains disparities between risk perception and preparedness;
For example, in Deloitte’s 2020 survey, 53% of executives perceived ethical issues as a major or extreme concern, but only 38% of respondents were fully prepared to address these risks.
This alarming gap between risk recognition and preparedness reflects the adoption of ‘soft law’ approaches which are persuasive and non-legislative.
(The Global Landscapes of AI Ethics Guidelines, 2019)
This approach has been criticised for its lack of consideration of practical implementation.
(AI Now 2021 Report, 2019).
The proliferation of soft policy approaches not only neglects practical implementation, but also often neglects geographical and demographic bias in the development of ethical guidelines (The Global Landscapes of AI Ethics Guidelines, 2019).
Many guidelines and studies originate from largely white, Western institutions, leading to the exclusion of underrepresented groups (AI Now 2021 Report, 2019).
There is thus a demand for policy and guidance to be diversified and for more practical approaches within corporations to be developed simultaneously in order to translate general ethical guidelines into internal structures and practices.
Currently, adoption of ethical AI principles in the private sector has been heterogeneous between corporations, and reports have suggested reluctance to admit AI ethics as a corporate issue (IBM: Everyday Ethics for Artificial Intelligence, 2020.)
For example, IBM’s survey of executives of companies using AI across varying sectors found that most named external factors such as tech companies, governments and customers as having the greatest influence on AI ethics, rather than factors the firms themselves claimed responsibility for.
A managerial approach to introducing AI ethics is evident within the private sector, yet established roles for ethical responsibility such as AI ethicist and Chief AI Ethics Officer have not been adopted across all firms.
(Capgemini: AI and the Ethical Conundrum, 2020)
Furthermore, there is a growing awareness that AI ethics should be introduced at all levels, not just via managerial positions.
Considering the evolution of AI ethics in and the continuing limitations of AI ethics within the private sector, the remainder of this report explores the current job market to identify the state of AI ethics roles.
Initial Market Scope.
As algorithms increasingly automate everyday activities performed by the individual across industries like:
HEALTHCARE
MARKETING
TRANSPORT
FINANCE
INSURANCE
MANUFACTURING
SECURITY & DEFENCE
AGRICULTURE
PUBLIC SECTOR
it is increasingly apparent that to consider AI and its ethical ramifications is no longer simply the prerogative of Software and IT firms.
Decisions that are made using algorithms impact nearly every aspect of our lives.
By retrieving information about an individual, AI is used to assess the likelihood of individuals’ reoffending, for example, by the COMPAS system in US legal courts, to determine individuals’ eligibility for insurance, education and recruitment, to enact predictive policing and, more insidiously, even to surveil citizens via facial recognition.
When such algorithms are coded with bias or using ‘black boxes’ that obscure their justifications for the decision-making to which they contribute, AI bears the risk of disenfranchising members of a society.
AI’s considerable social, political and economic influence is such that jobs at the intersection of AI and ethics demand an interdisciplinary approach.
Fostering multistakeholderism and a diversity of opinion is necessary to mitigate the risk of issues facing AI, such as algorithmic bias and lack of transparency.
In the past 5 years, a substantial amount of research energy has been devoted to establishing AI ethics principles.
AlgorithmWatch’s AI Ethics Guidelines Global Inventory compiled 160 documents by various companies and organisations all setting out AI principles and guidelines. (Thümmler: 2020)
The Berkman Klein Center’s white paper identified 36 prominent documents that set out ethical approaches to AI principles between 2016 to 2019 alone.
(Principled Artificial Intelligence: Mapping Consensus in Ethical and Rights-Based Approaches to Principles for AI, 2020)
The Berkman Klein Center study speaks to the significant breadth of job sectors within which research into ethical AI principles has been undertaken: within governmental institutions; inter-governmental organisations; civil society; private sector companies; advocacy groups and multi-stakeholder institutions.
The Berkman Klein Center report does not simply evidence the breadth of job sectors incorporating ethical approaches to AI. It also shows that, as early as 2016-2019, there was an awareness within these sectors regarding the need for cross-sector dialogue in order to practice AI ethics.
64% of all the approaches to AI principles emphasised the importance of multi-stakeholder collaboration, defined as: ‘encouraging or requiring that designers and users of AI systems consult relevant stakeholder groups while developing and managing the use of AI applications’ (Principled Artificial Intelligence: Mapping Consensus in Ethical and Rights-Based Approaches to Principles for AI, 2020).
IBM’s ‘Everyday Ethics for AI’ report (2019) recommended cross-sector dialogue between AI developers, policymakers and academics to encourage a diversity of perspectives within AI systems.
Access Now’s ‘Human Rights in the Age of AI’ (2018) advised that private-sector actors should assess AI systems by collaboration with external human rights organisations as well as human rights and AI experts.
The emphasis in these reports on the need for multistakeholderism in developing ethical AI, particularly across job sectors, is reflective of a wider trend in AI Ethics scholarship to herald a move ‘from principles to practice’ (European Parliamentary Research Service, 2020).
As the 160 ‘AI principles’ documents compiled by AlgorithmWatch and the 36 compiled by The Berkman Klein Center respectively show, the AI ethics research landscape contains a proliferation of theoretical approaches to the subject.
Moving to apply these principles in practice, the current rhetoric in discussions of ethical AI marks a shift to focussing on the ways in which ethics can be more technically incorporated into technology.
This rhetoric advocates for the worth of roles that align theoretical research about ethics and/or AI with practical initiatives.
Due to the constraints of time, DataEthics4All has focused on two key practical sectors that are tending to work collaboratively with ethical theorists and researchers across traditional occupational boundaries:
In order to move ‘from principles to practice’ in terms of advancing AI ethics, AI policy experts are adopting more collaborative approaches to integrate ethical perspectives into governance.
The European Parliamentary Research Service recommendations (2020) particularly champion the benefits of this collaboration, using seven key insights from theoretical ethics and technology research as the framework for their AI policy recommendations.
The recognition that the issues tackled in AI policy roles necessarily involve or should involve AI ethics is evident even in 2019.
DataEthics4All has identified that all 5 of the ‘Emerging and Urgent Concerns in 2019’ as listed in the AI Now 2019 Report are characterizable also as issues of ethical concern (AI Index 2019 Report).
THE 5 CONCERNS READ AS FOLLOWS:
Similarly aligning principles of ethics and practical governance, the Public Policy Programme at The Alan Turing Institute utilises the Data Ethics Framework as a practical tool to support their policy direction (Understanding Artificial Intelligence Ethics and Safety, 2019).
This approach to AI Ethics is often alternatively characterised by phrases such as ‘embedding values in design’; ‘value-sensitive design’ and ‘ethically aligned design.’
The trend towards favouring proactive ethics in respect of AI has coincided with the emergence of an approach to AI called Ethics by Design.
Ethics by Design as defined in AI Ethics is ‘a key component of responsible innovation that aims to integrate ethics in the design and development stage of the technology’ (Artificial Intelligence, Responsibility Attribution, and a Reasonable Justification of Explainability, 2020).
Traditionally, the jobs linked to the design and development stage of AI might include AI researchers, data scientists, engineers, data analysis roles, UX/UI designers and their associated positions.
Indeed’s 2018 research into the emerging trends in artificial intelligence evidences the pervasiveness of such design and development roles in the AI field (Jobs of the Future: Emerging Trends in Artificial Intelligence, 2018).
Out of all the jobs requiring AI skills as identified by Indeed in 2018, 94.2% were machine learning engineers and 75.1% were data scientists, evidencing a clear demand for such design and development roles.
In order to practice Ethics by Design, rather than simply having their design and development teams working as siloes, more organisations are encouraging their teams to collaborate with ethicists.
Microsoft recently created a specialised Ethics and Society team within their engineering function (Ethics by Design: An Organisational Approach to Responsible Use of Technology, 2020).
This allowed ethics experts to actively encourage engineers to embed ethical principles within AI at the early stage of development, thereby mitigating the risk of reifying ethical problems into their technology.
Similarly, Workday initiated a cross-functional AI Ethics Initiative task force to develop the company’s machine learning ethics, involving experts from sectors including: product and engineering, legal, public policy and privacy and ethics and compliance (Ethics by Design: An Organisational Approach to Responsible Use of Technology, 2020).
Though progress is still ongoing, the emphasis in the AI Ethics field on multi-stakeholder approaches, on policy that uses ethical principles and on ethics by design are likely to encourage a more collaborative AI job market.
If design and engineering functions increasingly operate alongside ethicists, this is likely also to bridge the gap between STEM subjects and their humanities counterparts.
In-depth Analysis of the Current Job Market.
To obtain a snapshot of the current AI ethics job market, data was downloaded from 80,000 Hours, a US-based organisation that focuses explicitly on ethical employment (80000 hours).
Available postings from 20/09/20 to 29/06/21 under the problem area ‘AI safety & policy’ were selected.
The job roles listed as AI safety and policy can be broadly characterised as roles in AI ethics, reflecting how the governance of AI is increasingly being wedded to AI ethics.
Research using an independent job board validated this link, showing that 12% of responsible technology job postings were classed as policy roles.
The independent job board used is the All Tech is Human ‘Responsible Tech Job Board’.
[visualizer id="13412" lazy="no" class=""]
Roles associated with AI Safety and Policy account for 17% of all listings on the 80,000 Hours database, the second most popular sector after global health and poverty, resulting in a total sample of 122 postings.
As 80,000 Hours is US-based, their job postings may have a English-speaking or US bias, so the results should not be accepted as representative of the global distribution of jobs in AI ethics.
Nevertheless, the US is a leading player in AI ethics so the dataset provides a useful insight into the current state of employment with an ethical focus within the AI sector.
Of all the published job postings, the US jobs market clearly dominated (accounting for 73% of total jobs) — more than all other countries combined.
The country with the second highest number of postings was the UK (10%).
Location of AI Safety and Policy Postings between 20/09/2020 – 29/06/2021
[visualizer id="13418" lazy="no" class=""]
The dataset is limited to job postings from September 2020 – July 2021 and thus should only be treated as a snapshot of the current jobs market.
In order to elucidate the various synonyms for AI Ethics, DataEthics4All conducted research into the vocabulary deployed in job descriptions that advertised roles involving AI ethics.
Previous attempts to categorise the terms used to refer to ethical and human-rights based approaches to AI were relatively sparse.
However, the Berkman Klein Center’ s 2020 analysis upon the 36 prominent documents that set out ethical approaches to AI principles between 2016 to 2019 was particularly fruitful.
The Center evidenced the eight key themes by which AI ethics was most consistently described.
(Principled Artificial Intelligence: Mapping Consensus in Ethical and Rights-Based Approaches to Principles for AI, 2020)
Privacy
Human Control of Technology
Transparency & Explainability
Safety & Security
EIGHT KEY THEMES
Fairness and Non-discrimination
Accountability
Professional Responsibility
Promotion of Human Values
The DataEthics4All research, broadening sample size to 122, was based on using these broad thematic categories to investigate the sort of vocabulary used in job descriptions.
The data shows that the most frequent words used to describe AI Ethics jobs are ‘safety’ or ‘security’, suggesting that the AI ethicist role is in large part concerned with mitigating and apprehending possible security risks caused by AI.
However, this conclusion has various limitations, not least that we might reasonably expect a search for job descriptions containing either one of two words to reflect more results than that of one word.
Despite this limitation, however, ‘safety’ or ‘security’ clearly represents significantly more results than any of the counterpart searches that contained two words, such as ‘transparency’ or ‘explainability.’
Another possible limitation of our findings that cannot be so easily resolved is that the spread of our data, characterised by 80,000 Hours as ‘AI safety & policy’ roles, tends towards jobs that inherently involve ‘safety.’
This crucial limitation of the dataset makes it impossible to conclude that jobs about ‘safety’ or ‘security’ dominate the AI Ethics job market as a whole.
Despite these limitations, however, our data does illuminate the extent to which different vocabulary is used to refer to jobs in the field of ‘AI Ethics,’ suggesting a lack of fixed scope for such jobs that reflects the relative novelty of the field.
[visualizer id="13507" lazy="no" class=""]
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[visualizer id="13528" lazy="no" class=""]
[visualizer id="14411" lazy="no" class=""]
The analysis revealed the top three most common combinations of role types after ‘various different combinations’ to be:
Making up 28% of all combinations, the collaboration between engineering and research emerges as particularly significant in the AI Ethics field.
This collaboration reflects DataEthics4All’s findings regarding the increasing emphasis in the AI Ethics field on practicing Ethics by Design and incorporating ethical research into engineering.
While the 7% of combinations that were between policy and research roles is unsurprising given the traditional relation between these disciplines, the 9% of collaborations represented by engineering, policy and research is informative.
The collaboration would suggest that AI policy is being informed by experts in the mechanics of AI and perhaps even that the engineering of AI is apprehending possible future regulatory issues with the technology from the onset.
To corroborate these findings, additional research would however be necessary.
77% of job listings specified only 0-2 years experience, pointing to accessibility.
However, the data collected does not account for discrimination based on experience between candidates further within the recruitment process.
Similarly, only 24% of postings required a masters degree or higher, again highlighting the obtainability of roles within AI ethics.
[visualizer id="13995" lazy="no" class=""]
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RECOMMENDATIONS.
CONCLUSIONS.
AI remains a disruptive force at the forefront of technological research with huge potential to generate positive societal change. As the ethical risks of AI are further explored, there is increasing demand to address the corresponding potential for the technology to negatively impact society.
Accounting for ethical risks via the private sector is an essential step to increasing transparency and accountability and will enable the better adoption of AI across the corporate landscape and society at large.
Despite that an impetus for collaboration between disciplines and across job sectors is evident within the AI Ethics field, much remains to be done to ensure that the functions developing and designing AI are in constant dialogue with ethicists, policy-makers, researchers and other stakeholders.
Those that build and design the technologies that are becoming increasingly integrated into our social, political and economic interactions have a responsibility to ensure that AI reflects a diversity of perspectives.
More than simply collaborating across functions, the future of the AI Ethics field may require entirely new roles to be developed that better align design and development perspectives with ethical ones.
For, as Palm and Hansson identify, despite cross-sector collaboration, engineers are still themselves ‘seldom trained to discuss the ethical issues in a pre-emptive perspective’ (Palm; Hansson: 2006). The skills necessary to identify and conceptualise ethical issues are still, for the most part, the expected prerogative of applied ethicists: The European Parliamentary Research Service claims that it is ‘unlikely’ that the current data scientists or engineers possess them (2020)
The conclusion that emerges is that, if jobs do not yet exist that are recruiting those with the necessary diversity of skills and perspectives to combine technical design and development with ethical frameworks, there may be a presumed new role invented for such ethical engineers.
As a field that is evolving at such a rapid pace, it is reasonable to assume that AI Ethics and its associated job market will adapt to meet the challenge of technology that requires inherently collaborative, multi-disciplinary approaches.
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“Tutors are looking for a sample of your voice, personality, and unique perspective.”
“This summer camp is an investment in your child’s future college career as they will develop skills for life, not just for the college application process.”
499
“The camp will run from July 18-22 2022, costing $499, but it can be accessed for free.”
“It will be led by the brilliant Jody Cohan-French, who has guided many students to secure places in Ivy League and other exceptional colleges in the US.”
Expand
The college application essay can seem like a terrifying requirement. Tutors are looking for a sample of your voice, personality, and unique perspective. But how to express this in 600 words? And how to stand out from the crowd when doing so, without sounding boastful or in-genuine?
The pressure to write a good college application essay is intense. The other elements of the application are of course important, but the essay could be the deciding factor between two equally-matched students. This is why it is vitally important that your voice is clear. Ultimately, tutors are looking to match prospective students with their existing student body. If they cannot identify who a student is and what they are like, this is impossible and the application will be rejected.
With this in mind, parents want to naturally support their children in any way possible to achieve their dream college place.
There are many options available: online support, in-person tutoring, and even services that write essays for students. Some of these services, however, may only be detrimental to the student. After all,
Colleges are looking for their unique voice, not a non-specific paper churned out from an essay mill. It therefore must be the student that writes the essay.
This is why the STEAM in AI summer camp is so unique. During the STEAM in AI summer camp, your child will be provided with expert help in choosing an application essay topic, drafting the essay, and reviewing it.
It will be led by the brilliant Jody Cohan-French, who has guided many students to secure places in Ivy League and other exceptional colleges in the US.
All participants in the course will have the opportunity to directly ask Jody questions, and receive personalized one-to-one feedback on their essays. Students will be provided with the opportunity to review potential colleges with Jody and discover how the application process differs for each. By the end of the camp, a student will be more prepared, more organized, and more comfortable in knowing that they are ready to take the leap into the next chapter of their life.
The camp is aimed at students in their junior year, who are looking to make applications to top colleges in the US and beyond.
The camp will run from July 18-22 2022, costing $499, but it can be accessed for free.
DataEthics4All and the STEAM in AI Summer Camp program are now welcoming applications from all individuals who wish to excel and achieve their full potential.
This summer camp is unique in its ultimate aim. The purpose of the program is to break barriers of entry in technology and to facilitate young people in the pursuit of AI and STEAM careers (science, sociology; technology, technical education; engineering, ethics; arts, analytics; mathematics, mentoring). DataEthics4All also aims to build diversity, inclusion, and equity through its grassroots approach.
The emphasis on inclusion is clear from the generous scholarship program provided. If your child is a junior in high school, lives in the United States, intends to attend college here, and has a minimum GPA of 3.5 they may be eligible for a scholarship if they meet at least one of these socioeconomic conditions: the combined income of their custodial parent(s)/guardian(s) plus child support payments, if any, must not exceed $60,000; they will qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and qualify for an SAT or ACT fee waiver.
By participating in the camp, your child will feel capable of self-assuredly completing the college application essay. They will master the art of storytelling that is so essential to the application essay and any supplementary essays colleges require. With the help of STEAM in AI, students will discover their voice: a skill not just for the essay, but also for life.
Here are 6 common pitfalls of the college application essay that any student should work to avoid.
1. A Weak Opening
The opening sentence is the make-or-break moment in a college application essay. This is your opportunity to hook your reader and make them want to read on. Beginning with something uninteresting, not engaging, or without potential can lose a reader instantly. Instead, start with an unusual occurrence, something peculiar or out-of-the-ordinary, or even something mundane that you can then expand on. These openings have the potential to inspire a reader and can be the tools by which you highlight your unique voice and experiences.
However, the opening sentence does not have to be innately dramatic. Not every college application essay has to be about an insightful or unusual event. Considering the number of such application essays tutors receive every year, something more restrained may actually work to your benefit. Your opening could be more of a slow burn: something intriguing but not immediately obvious. The content of the rest of the essay could then be dedicated to explaining the significance of this seemingly ordinary occurrence.
As long as your opening makes you stand out from the crowd, this common mistake has been avoided.
2. Not making a point
The key skill in the college application essay is storytelling. Sadly, this is a skill that students are generally not well practiced in. At High School, they learn a specific essay structure, and departing from this is criticized, not rewarded. Through the STEAM in AI summer camp program, students will be taught the vital elements of storytelling, and how to implement these in the college application essay.
Throughout the essay, you should be telling a story, and via this story, make a point about your life, learning journey, and experiences so far.
Without this ‘point’, the essay has no purpose. It is by drawing conclusions from the story told that your essay will illustrate your maturity and aptitude for learning, features every tutor wants to see.
3. Not adhering to the word limit
Too little and you appear uncommitted and your application rushed. Too much and your essay will be cut off at the word count and will be submitted incomplete. The same goes for supplementary essays: if the word count is specified, stick to this to ensure that you do not waste words or the admission tutor’s time.
Going substantially over the word count on your first draft is not a bad thing. From this point, you can rework your essay to better fit the requirement. After repeating this process, your writing will be more succinct: a vital skill for writing essays once you make it to your dream college!
4. Not answering the question
It is boring but it is true: answer the question! A college application or supplementary essay may ask: Why are you interested in the major you indicated as your first choice? Or: Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes, or contributed to group efforts over time. In either of these scenarios, focusing on the question at hand is key.
You may have excellent examples of other skills, or you are still battling with expressing why exactly you want to do the major you are applying for, but you still need to answer the question! A generic, nonspecific response indicates to tutors that you have not put much thought into your essay and that as such, you are not really committed to the college you are applying for.
To avoid this pitfall, you should take care to answer the question directly, evidencing your focus and commitment to tutors.
5. Not writing in your personal voice
It’s your application for your future. You are being addressed, not your parents or teachers. So, try to break out of the spell they may have on your writing and find your own personal voice. Only through this will tutors be able to get a sense of what kind of student you are.
The STEAM in AI Summer Camp will enable students to harness their personal voices to great effect.
6. Not proofreading
Yes, your personal voice is essential, but that does not mean that you can get away with not proofreading. No excellent college application essay is produced in one go. A competitive application requires writing, redrafting, and reviewing; with this process being repeated many times over. The proofreading process should involve external help.
Getting parents and teachers to look over your application can be very helpful, so long as they do not drastically alter your personal voice.
If a friend could submit your essay instead of you, then this personal element has been lost. Proofreading can pick up on errors and work to refine the piece, but it should never be to the detriment of your personality or perspective.
The STEAM in AI summer camp will develop on all 6 of these key tips and tricks, and will enable students to feel confident, reassured, and enthused to write their college application essays.
This camp is an investment in your child’s future college career as they will develop skills for life, not just for the college application process.
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“In less than 2 years, what started as a humble initiative has turned into a Movement” ~ Shilpi Agarwal
“DataEthics4All has the first independent – which means they don’t have any fiduciary responsibility – Advisory Council on Data Ethics”
~ Shilpi Agarwal
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``In less than two years, we have grown to 1000 Plus members in our community`` ~ Shilpi Agarwal
“[Our youth] definitely know about what affects them and how they experience disinformation, or polarization, this constant validation that kids today are looking for on social media” ~ Shilpi Agarwal
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About the Talk
Join our Founder & CEO Shilpi Agarwal for her Talk on DataEthics4All’s Impact in Numbers for AI DIET World, Day 1 in which she discusses our Mission, the 1000+ strong community membership from over 54 countries, as well as the Data Ethics Advisory Council, the World’s 1st independent Advisory Council on Data Ethics, our Data Ethics Leadership Council and AI Youth Council, the first-ever Youth Council to inspire our next generation on the Ethical Use of AI and who founded the FREE STEM Youth Tutoring Club. Join this talk to learn this and much more about the Impact our Programs are having in Numbers!
Transcript
0:18 Shilpi Agarwal: Hello, and welcome everyone. I wanted to give you a brief description and story about DataEthics4All itself. So as you know, my name is Shilpi Agarwal, and I’m the founder of DataEthics4All, and I want to tell you a story about the impact of DataEthics4All in numbers.
0:34 Shilpi: So I started DataEthics4All in January of 2020, with a mission of raising awareness on the ethical use of data and AI, building the next generation of ethics 1st leaders and tackling diversity in tech through a grassroots approach. In less than two years, what started as a humble initiative has turned into a movement, all with your help and support – and I really thank you all for that.
1:12 Shilpi: We started the DataEthics4All initiative as a community, the first programme that we started was a community, a place for like minded people to come together and discuss the black, white, grey, and still very nascent and issues of ethics when it comes to data science and artificial intelligence. The ground rules haven’t been put down yet, so it was and it is still very new in terms of what the community believes is the right thing to do when it comes to ethics in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. So the community was a way for us to have an open discussion about some of these very difficult topics, publicly and privately, some of the things that we are not able to bring up within the company, or if we want to learn more, because we are grounded in our ethics.
2:08 Shilpi: We want to learn more, we want to do the right thing, but we don’t know what the right thing is yet, or what society believes the right thing is. So this whole forum was started to have an open dialogue for such topics. In less than two years, we have grown to 1000 Plus members in our community – which may seem like not like a million people, it may seem like a small number, but if you look at it, if you look at the stats of who these people are in the community, and what the community looks like, it really is a very, very, very impressive number.
2:51 Shilpi: Our community members are from ages 11 to 18 years old – so unlike any other forums, organizations, or industry associations, we welcome a dialogue between age groups, because we feel that our youth, the next generation of leaders, have so much wisdom to share when it comes to data privacy.
3:16 Shilpi: They are on social media, they may not know about privacy, but they definitely know about what affects them and how they experience disinformation, or polarization, or this constant validation that kids today are looking for on social media, from their friends and their immediate fans.
3:37 Shilpi: All of that is important for us, the younger and the older audiences talking about and seeing how we can make changes and improve the situation for tomorrow.
So what is really impressive is that our audience ranges from 11 years old to 80 years old.
3:56 Shilpi: We also have member representation from 54 countries. Now, I don’t know if this number looks that impressive to you, but I had to look it up, and Google told me that there are a total of 197 countries in the world.
4:11 Shilpi: So out of the 195/197 countries, we have representation for almost 25% of the countries of the world – I think that’s very impressive, and I love that we have representation from so many different parts of the globe.
4:41 Shilpi: So today, DataEthics4All is not only known for its community, but also for its many, many programmes. Along the way we have achieved many firsts, and I want to tell you a little bit about what those firsts are.
4:58 Shilpi: DataEthics4All has the first independent – which means they don’t have any fiduciary responsibility – advisory council on data ethics to create awareness on the ethical use of the NI data pipeline.
5:13 Shilpi: So as you know, if you Google it, you’ll see that there isn’t any other council like this with a mission for data ethics and artificial intelligence that doesn’t have a fiduciary responsibility. Most of the ethics councils are both set within the companies, within the organizations, and they are part of their own organization.
Our Ethics Advisory Council is an independent board with 13 CXOs from various different disciplines – from for profit companies, to non-profit companies, to fortune 500 even.
5:56 Shilpi: Next, we have the DataEthics4all Leadership Council which, again, has members from across the globe. We have someone from London, Susanna, Bruce, and myself from the California Bay Area, we have Kevin from Canada, and we have Sam from London, Oxford, England. So we have a small but really mighty team.
6:22 Shilpi: Our leadership council is the backbone of our organization and it’s the brain of all the programmes. I invite you all to join us because as you will see, some of the stories and videos that we have posted, the rashes and things, the fun that we have together while getting some work done – so our motto has always been work hard and play hard, and I invite you all to join because we are a fun group of people to be with.
6:50 Shilpi: We have the DataEthics4All AI Youth Council, which is the first ever Youth Council to inspire our next generation on the ethical use of artificial intelligence.
7:02 Shilpi: They started a free stem youth tutoring club that is so unique in so many different ways. And I’m going to tell you more about that tomorrow. It’s a 10 pillar programme -and this is a running joke in our leadership council; DataEthics4All always has pillars, we have pillars of our framework, we have 12 pillars in our framework, we have 10 pillars in our free stem programme. So we are bringing pillars that are the strongest part of the foundation. So we are bringing the foundation, we are bringing the pillars, and we are inviting all of you to join us to help us build the building.
7:45 Shilpi: Our think tank members of the EIU Council are really active in town hall discussions. They are active Think Tank members, they participate in Summits, they have participated in hackathons, they have taught workshops, they have designed courses for youth by youth on the introduction of data, artificial intelligence and ethics. This is available in the Data Ethics Institute for a certificate for free that kids can put on their college applications, so we are really proud of our youth council.
8:28 Shilpi: I mentioned that our Data Ethics Institute not only hosts the three courses that our youth conference designed, but it also hosts 16 other courses and a lot more are on the way.
8:41 Shilpi: With 484 students registered, we have some very unique courses, such as AI ethics and predictive policing, using data visualization to counter bias – some of these very unique programmes and courses that are not available on any other of the learning platforms. today.
9:04 Shilpi: We introduced the AI diet magazine, and you know what DIET stands for, we are all about the DIET acronym, our AI DIET World, our AI DIET magazine, our 100 DIET champions, all stemmed from that one acronym called ‘DIET’ – which is data diversity, inclusion, impact ethics, equity, teams and technology. So this is the first magazine designed not just to inform readers on the AI and ML of the data science landscape, but to provide a holistic view from the topic of the cognitive lens of AI.
9:44 Shilpi: Like I mentioned, we published the first 100 list of DIET champions, which unlike any other list out there, is to honor trailblazers in the fields of data, diversity inclusion, impact ethics, equity, teams and technology.
10:04 Shilpi: These are trailblazers and champions leading the forefront within the company and outside the company. So this is not a list based on gender, or based on age, or based on industry, this runs across industry, across geographical regions, across industries – it is a one of a kind list that we are very proud to have put together. Hopefully we’ll continue doing that year after year, we may revisit the 100 DIET champions to call it the 100 AI champions, but it is something that we are really proud of, and today, the first day of our AI DIET World, is also to celebrate the AI DIET champions.
10:50 Shilpi: The DataEthics4All also launched an AI society, which is the first directory that would give customers a choice of rating AI solutions.
10:59 Shilpi: We do this not just by price, ease of use, features and customer service, which are very much needed, but there are a lot of other platforms out there that do a great job with that. So our hope is to be able to go a step further and provide AI solutions, have customers rate AI solutions for ethics, trust, transparency, and privacy as well. Today, our AI society has 100 listed products, and it’s now open for customer reviews.
11:36 Shilpi: So I really encourage you all and I invite you to please take a look at our AI society, because that is what our hope is – to provide a holistic view on the AI solutions that are out there today. Whether you’re thinking of implementing any AI solution’s in your company, our hope is that you will be able to look at the reviews from a trust, privacy and data centric point of view and make the right choice.
12:06 Shilpi: To all the customers who have used these products, we would love to invite you to rate and review them based on how you think they are handling your data, and whether they have your trust because, as Christina Montgomery said in the first keynote talk today, trust is everything. We may not have quantitative data on what to do, but trust will tell you everything if your customers are using your product and they trust you, then that is the only metric you need, it’s a great metric. So let’s let’s use that metric and see if our customers trust us, and use us, and like us.
12:50 Shilpi: So DataEthics4All also made a pledge last thanksgiving after our AI Youth Council started the free stamp club, we realized that there is a large population of students that are being left behind because they don’t have the resources – yes there is homework help at school, and there is homework centers after school, but there’s still a lot that needs to be done.
13:25 Shilpi: So we made a pledge – a 5 million, 5 year pledge to help 5 million economically disadvantaged students.
13:33 Shilpi: Not just to help them with FaceTime tutoring, which is where we started, but we expanded the programme by providing leadership opportunities to these students, as well as career guidance and mentoring, career technical education, essay reviews, as well as help with their college applications. Today, we are working with over 30 tutors and volunteers for over 30 schools, and we are constantly reaching out to new superintendents and middle school and high school administrators, because this programme is for students from sixth grade to twelfth grade.
So if you know of school administrators, or if you can connect us to our parents who can connect us to students in your life who would love to get mentored and have career advice, please reach out to us and we would love to help.
14:31 Shilpi: To take the mission of the 5 million 5 year pledge forward, we partnered with the Oxford University’s internship office where we have worked with them and provided over 18 Oxford’s scholars with real life summer internship opportunities this summer, and there are some really great reviews and stories and in our AI DIET magazine, which is now a blog on our website. So please take a look at what our interns have spoken about, what was their experience in working with us, and the skills that they learned.
14:38 Shilpi: We are also expanding this internship opportunity to all colleges worldwide and all high schoolers worldwide. So sometimes it’s very difficult for under 16’s to really get summer internship opportunities that are in technology and business. So if you’re interested, please reach out to us.
15:42 Shilpi: We are also doing a mentors drive for our high schoolers with the colleges, because we want a tutors and mentors drive to have project lead mentors for our high schoolers. So if you are interested in joining us in this effort, again, please reach out to one of us in our leadership team to talk more in detail.
16:07 Shilpi: We have also partnered with the University of North Texas to bring a series of talks. The first talk we did was ‘My life as a linguist’, the curator of Smithsonian, Mary, has landed a wonderful job – and these are the kinds of things we are doing to introduce the youth of the next generation to encourage them and make them aware of the linear as well as the non-linear STEM careers that are available today.
16:37 Shilpi: We have hosted over 51 events, all the way from town halls, to Netflix parties, to a summit, and hackathon boot camp. We have done great talks, we have hosted our first volunteer appreciation award in Gala, we’ve done master boot camps, how to build and administer a chat box by our very own Sam, we have done exclusive mixers for youth as well as adults. So we have come a long way.
17:14 Shilpi: Nine of our volunteers were recommended for the Presidential Volunteer Service Award and they have earned it, which is one of the highest awards in the country that you can earn for community service, and let me tell you, the number of hours required to earn the Presidential Volunteer Service Award is a big number. We have over 89 volunteers and I’m really proud of our Volunteer Task Force, and exceptionally proud of the few that went an extra mile to earn the Presidential Volunteer Service Award.
17:59 Shilpi: With that, we feel like in less than two years, we have rolled out so many new programmes, the media is talking about us, we would like the media to talk about us more, but at least I think we have some traction. We feel that our work has just begun, and that’s why the Leadership Team at DataEthics4all felt that we need a new name, a new company by the name of DataEthics4All that can take the mission and the vision of this initiative forward to the next level. With that, I’m super thrilled to announce that just last week we filed for a Delaware public corporation. And we are now called the DateEthics4All Foundation.
18:51 Shilpi: We really hope and invite you to help make this vision a reality, and help us tackle diversity in tech through a grassroots approach.
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“According to ResumeGo research, CVs with a career gap are 45% less likely to receive an interview than those without.”
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``Of women in their survey ‘would feel anxious about taking a career break’ ``
“Candidates who have overcome adversity and navigated difficult periods might have an advantage over candidates without such experience”
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It has become increasingly common to be out of employment for extended periods of time. During the pandemic especially, many people have chosen to exit the workforce for health and safety reasons, because of responsibilities to their dependents, or simply because they were laid off due to cuts. Of course, this is hardly a recent phenomenon. Among women especially, career gaps have always been the norm, often due to the demands of maternity. And yet, a London Business School article in 2014 indicated that 70% of women in their survey ‘would feel anxious about taking a career break’. We’ve all heard anecdotes about the dreaded “gaps in the CV”, but it is difficult to understate their real impact. According to ResumeGo research, CVs with a career gap are 45% less likely to receive an interview than those without. These women are consistently overlooked in favor of ‘safer’ candidates without career gaps and their missing time is often used as a bargaining chip against them.
Walby and Olsen, for instance, found that each extra year of break corresponded to a 1% pay cut.
This is unfair.
While there might be genuine barriers to re-entry, career breaks often involve activities like caring or household management. These activities develop skills, experience, and knowledge that are valuable in the workplace as well. In fact, candidates who have overcome adversity and navigated difficult periods might have an advantage over candidates without such experience — even if it does take them longer to adjust to the workplace. Women who have taken career gaps face a multitude of issues when trying to return, from being stereotyped and disregarded to having to adjust to new methods and technologies common in their fields. An effective solution to these issues is a new type of program called a returnship, where women can reintegrate into the workforce through an internship-like program designed for returning workers.
Career Gaps: What’s the Problem?
Of course, career gaps do present challenges. Both returners and employers might struggle at first. It’s worth exploring what these challenges might be.
Candidates who have been out of the job market for years might not be up to date with the new technologies and processes used in the field. Coming back to work to a largely cloud-based environment, for instance, might be difficult to adjust to: simple tasks like uploading work to a shared folder could prove challenging. Adjusting to this is not easy — it may involve a steep learning curve in a fast-paced environment where mistakes are costly. Even if the workplace itself hasn’t changed, candidates might struggle because they’re out of practice. After an extended break from work, skills atrophy and knowledge becomes harder to access. A great example of this is language attrition, in which people forget even their native languages after periods of predominantly using other languages. Especially in the tech world, regular practice is imperative to maintain proficiency; becoming rusty with programming languages after years of disuse might disadvantage candidates in high-stress situations like interviews.
Women Returners interviewed Charlotte, a senior engineer who took two and a half years off work to raise her second child. She believed that application processes are implicitly tailored to those with recent experience. In a particularly gruelling interview, she struggled with a live coding exercise and was disheartened enough to quit the conventional job search entirely. In general, candidates who take time off might become unfamiliar and uncomfortable with aspects of the working environment, such as structured working hours and regular deadlines. They need time to refamiliarize themselves with the specific demands of their office jobs.
Interviews like Charlotte’s also illuminate another area of concern. After so long away from work, the skill degradation and inability to immediately adapt to new working environments have profound psychological impacts as well. Many women struggle with “stereotype threat” or “social identity threat”. Having entered an unfamiliar environment, self-consciousness leads to diminished self-confidence. Employees fear making small mistakes, worrying that they will be stereotyped and that they will confirm the judgment that their break makes them unsuited for the workplace.
Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end there. Problems extend beyond disadvantages resulting from factors like skill loss and low self-confidence. Many employers hold an implicit bias against career gaps. They often associate career gaps with negative attributes like laziness, being uncommitted, or being overly family-oriented. Consequently, candidates might be screened off before an interview simply because they indicate a career gap in their CV. Alternatively, they might be unfairly rejected in favor of less qualified candidates without career gaps. Nina, a manager in the tech world, was told at a job interview after a twenty-year break that she wouldn’t even be considered because her break was too long. It is a common misconception that a break is just wasted time, that women have lost skills and not gained useful experience. Yet, many of the things women spend time on during career breaks bring a lot of value to their work. Thus, companies are missing out on a massive pool of potential employees when they ignore women who have taken career breaks.
Potential Benefits to Career Gaps
Women take career gaps for several reasons many of which present excellent opportunities to develop transferable skills that are extremely valuable to employers.
Historically, childcare has been the leading reason for women’s career gaps. Raising a child is incredibly complex and demanding and hones several crucial skills. There’s much responsibility, with little direct support and guidance. There is no instruction manual. Ultimately, mothers have to make decisions that shape their child’s life. Such experience develops decision making skills, creativity, resilience as well as leadership. In addition, time management and task prioritization skills are constantly tested and improved by dealing with the endless stream of pressing tasks.
Another reason is caring for a sick or elderly family member. This is an exercise in empathy, planning, and communication. It can be an emotionally taxing process, which can build resilience and emotional growth. Also, it often involves negotiating complex environments and making critical choices, such as healthcare decisions for someone else. Strong communication is required in these situations to understand what the patient is going through and needs, and perhaps to have difficult conversations with family members and dependents about the situation.
While on a career break, many women take courses to upskill. With bourgeoning open online courses (MOOCs), it can be both inexpensive and convenient to maintain old skills and develop new ones, all from home. These courses present a less demanding alternative to stay ‘productive’ and demonstrate proficiency to prospective employers, where full time employment is not possible. Rather than relying on their pre-break experience and skills, these women are working hard to learn more and perform at a higher level. Women Returners shared Amma’s story of how she developed skills in her three-year-long break from banking while she looked after her three children. She took online Continuing Professional Development courses to boost her skills and volunteered locally to help her community. Over her break, she developed many soft skills critical in modern business. At the end of her break, she successfully achieved her goals: cared for her children, helped her community, and secured a returnship at the Bank of England.
Part-time work and volunteering are another way to develop and maintain skills. Women often carry out charity work during a career break, which allows them to do meaningful work that contributes to a good cause without committing unsustainable amounts of time. Imagine Magazine interviewed Shan, a journalist who took a career break for personal health and childcare reasons. Shan found it difficult to re-enter the workplace once she was ready. So instead, she set up a support network for people who, like her, suffered with thyroid imbalances. Shan presents a good example of how career breaks can provide an opportunity to change direction, or even to simply develop new skills, make an impact, and then return to work. Her charity work allowed her to develop various leadership skills and to demonstrate her ability to get things done, attributes prized by any company.
The skills women develop over a career break are countless. Even running a household—balancing the many household chores and demands—involves using many skills like management, leadership, and communication. Attributes aside, hiring such women is extremely useful for diversity purposes. The homogeneous work environments of many companies stifle their innovation and creativity. By hiring women with non-corporate experience, companies can inject fresh perspectives. Currently, such talent is being underutilized. A PwC report estimates that roughly 2 in 3 women returning to the workforce are employed in positions below their potential. If job- returners were brought back into the workforce and placed in appropriate roles, the report estimates up to $2.25bn could be generated in the UK alone. Thus, there is enormous economic potential that can be realized by giving women opportunities to return to the workforce.
Solutions: Returnship
Given these immense benefits, and the value to both candidates and employers resulting from career breaks, it’s important to consider whether the challenges discussed earlier can be overcome.
One increasingly popular way to overcome the challenges and leverage the value from career breaks is Returnships. These are short-term programs that allow professionals to get back to work after a career break. Returnships help ‘returners’ ease in, recover their skills, and understand how the industry has changed since they left. They are similar to internships, running over a short three to six month period in which the returner does a variety of work to gain relevant experience and to find a good fit. As we’ve seen, after career breaks people often return to environments where the work is similar but the methods have changed. Returnships give women time to adjust to the new methods required in their working environment, as well as to decide which roles now suit them best, rather than going straight into a job by default. After all, job responsibilities change over time and returners develop new skills and experiences. Thus Returnships offer the chance for women to build up their experience by working on different projects and find the areas that suit them best.
Returnships benefit companies too. They offer a trial period with an employee to see how well the employee functions within the company, without committing to hiring them if it doesn’t work out. And if it does work out these employees have a better understanding of the whole company and are more likely to manage responsibilities best suited to them. This is a tried and tested model. Companies already do this for interns, hiring students that fit well with the firm after a mutually-beneficial ‘trial’ period. Goldman Sachs’ program, for instance, yielded great returns. Around 50% of the 123 participants in their Returnships to date have taken on full-time positions at the bank. The benefit to the employer is clear. It’s a simple way to evaluate candidates and attract talented prospective workers. Now more than ever, in the face of a labor shortage resulting from Covid-19, it is vital that we appreciate the talented professionals returning from careers breaks, and do not squander that immense potential.
What can you do?
What you do matters. Here are a few things you can do:
Use your time off. During a career gap it’s easy to be overwhelmed by your other responsibilities, but it’s important to stay in touch with your professional life if you intend to return to it at some point. This need not be time-intensive or stressful. While you obviously took a break for a reason, it’s much easier to do some productive activity in the background when you have the time, like an online course or certification, than it is to do full time work.
Make your transferable skills explicit. Whatever you did during your break, it likely developed transferable skills of the sort that we’ve discussed. If you can direct attention towards these, employers will focus on what you gained from your time off rather than what you lost. You can help dispel the idea that you “weren’t working” and instead show that you were simply doing a different type of work, one equally challenging and valuable.
Be positive about the break. One of the best ways to overcome the challenges posed by a career break is to control the narrative. If you come across as anxious about the impact your time away has on your prospects, then employers will naturally assume that it’s a bad thing. But if you frame it as a positive experience — one from which you learned — then employers will be more receptive. Simply giving a reason for your career break has been shown to increase hiring rates by 60%, or 2.5 percentage points, on average.
Apply for returnships. As we’ve seen, returnships can be incredibly valuable. They can provide you with a gentle re-introduction to the workplace aimed at alleviating your anxiety and recapturing your skills. Rather than facing the daunting prospect of being thrown into the deep end, consider returnships designed to support you through the toughest parts of returning to work.
If you’re in the fields of Data and AI visit womenindataethics.org to apply for DataEthics4All’s Returnship program, starting soon!
- Behroozi, Mahnaz et. al. “Does stress impact technical interview performance?” Proceedings of the 28th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, November 2020, pp. 481-492.
- “Budget 2017 — Government support for returnships could provide £1.7bn boost to economy.” PwC, 8 March 2017, pwc.blogs.com/press_room/2017/03/budget-2017-government-support-for-returnships-could-provide-17bn-boost-to-economy.html
- Content team. “Returnships: How Effective Are They in Today’s Working World?” CV Library: Recruitment Insights, 19 July 2017, www.cv-library.co.uk/recruitment-insight/returnships-in-todays-working-world/
- Cohen, Carol Fishman. “The ‘40-Year-Old Intern’ Goes to Wall Street.” Harvard Business Review, 2 Nov. 2014, https://hbr.org/2014/02/the-40-year-old-intern-goes-to-wall-street
- Cook, Grant. “Career skills you learn as a parent.” careers.govt.nz, 26 June 2019. www.careers.govt.nz/articles/career-skills-you-learn-as-a-parent
- Edin, Per-Anders, and Gustavsson, Magnus. “Time out of Work and Skill Depreciation.” Industrial & Labor Relations Review, vol. 61, no. 2, 2008, pp. 163–180
- Hong, Lu, and Page, Scott E. “Groups of Diverse Problem Solvers Can Outperform Groups of High-Ability Problem Solvers.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – PNAS, vol. 101, no. 46, 2004, pp. 16385–16389
- Kinias, Zoe, and Henriane Mourgue d’Algue. “A Career Break Shouldn’t Spell Doom for a Woman’s Work Life.” The National, 14 August 2020, www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/a-career-break-shouldn-t-spell-doom-for-a-woman-s-work-life-1.1062779.
- Lindsay, Erin “Career Break: Three women tell their (very different) stories about taking time from work.” Image Magazine, 20 January 2022, www.image.ie/agenda/career-breaks-three-women-tell-very-different-stories-taking-time-work-11450.
- Minter, Harriet. “70% Of Women Fear Taking a Career Break.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 25 March 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2014/mar/25/70-of-women-fear-taking-a-career-break.
- Mullen, Caitlin. “AI use in hiring means women with employment gaps get overlooked.” Boston Business Journal, 24 September 2021, www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2021/09/24/ai-hiring-women-employment-gaps.html.
- Nabanita De. “The Benefits of Returnships”. Interview by Tom O’Gorman [Zoom], 16 March 2022.
- Olsen, W.K, and Walby, S. Modelling Gender Pay Gaps. Equal Opportunities Commission, 2004.
- “Positive Aspects of Caregiving.”American Psychological Association, 2011, www.apa.org/pi/about/publications/caregivers/faq/positive-aspects.
- “Research Data Summary: Career Breaks & Returning to Work.” Women Returners, 2021, womenreturners.com/employers/facts-figures/research-data-summary.
- “Return To Work Success Story Library.” Women Returners, 2022, womenreturners.com/returners/success-stories.
- Yang, Peter. “How Resume Employment Gaps Affect Interview Chances of Job Applicants.” Resume Writing Services, 2019, https://www.resumego.net/research/resume-employment-gaps/
Tom O’Gorman – Micro Intern, Oxford University
Suryansh Mehta – Micro Intern, Oxford University
https://www.freepik.com/vectors/computer-work’, Computer work vector created by jcomp – www.freepik.com
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by Ayomikun Bolaji
During my first winter vacation, I decided to join DataEthics4All for an internship, to explore parts of my degree, Computer Science and Philosophy, and more. It is a decision I most definitely do not regret.
Growing up in a world full of tech and constantly being exposed to issues with our use and collection of data made DataEthics4All’s mission resonates with me. Raising awareness on the impact of the use of data, encouraging people of all backgrounds to consider a role in technology, regardless of gender, race, and using this data in a responsible manner are all things that are essential to our future in tech and are also things that I noticed DataEthics4All strives for.
During my time as a WordPress designer for DataEthics4All in the winter of 2021, I had the pleasure of working with three insightful research papers and turning them into three separate web pages. The intention was to display the information in a way that was entertaining yet still educational to read. Through this, I learned a great deal about diversity and inclusion in tech, safe use of biometric data, and the AI job landscape in 2021.
I also had no previous substantial experience with WordPress or web design; therefore, I am grateful to have been given the opportunity, by DataEthics4All, to learn on the job. I am now very proud to say that I learned how to use WordPress in three weeks and have also developed and improved my skills in editing, web design, and data visualization, all thanks to the tremendous amount of support and guidance from my supervisor Shilpi Agarwal, as well as the rest of the DataEthics4All team.
DataEthics4All has been very insightful for me in thinking about potential future careers, given me the opportunity to work with an amazing, trailblazing team, and has given me the confidence to take more initiative in future endeavors.
So, again, I’d like to thank Shilpi for taking a chance on me and supporting me throughout my internship.
I’d also like to invite you all to take a look at the web pages:
Press Release: DataEthics4Allᵀᴹ Launches AI DIETᵀᴹ Returnship Program for Women+ on International Women’s Day
Press Release: DataEthics4Allᵀᴹ Launches AI DIETᵀᴹ Returnship Program for Women+ on International Women's Day. An inclusive program to help Women+ in Tech with a Career Gap to Re-enter the Workforce.
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On International Women’s Day, it gives us great pleasure to announce the launch of DataEthics4All’s AI DIET Returnship Program for Women+.
An inclusive program to help Women+ in Tech with a Career Gap to Re-enter the Workforce.
DataEthics4All Foundation is launching an AI DIETᵀᴹ Returnship Program exclusively for Women+ to help experienced workers in tech who took a break from the workforce for a few years to raise children, care for a sick parent, deal with an illness, or for military service and would like to re-enter the workforce.
DIETᵀᴹ stands for Data, Diversity, Inclusion, Impact, Ethics, Equity, Teams and Technology and we feel that this new definition of Diversity and Inclusion in Tech is necessary to Build A Better AI World Together!!
The AI DIET Returnship Program is for anyone who identifies themselves as a Woman, has worked in Tech, cares about the ethics of the entire end-to-end data science pipeline and all it’s use cases including Artificial Intelligence.
This 12 week Returnship will help those who already have several years of experience working in the tech world, and would like to rebuild their technical skills.
The Program will provide Mentoring support from our DataEthics4All Community of 1100+ Global leaders from 54 Countries at the intersection of Data, Technology, Policy, Ethics and Social Impact
and an opportunity to work on a real life project that can be showcased to a potential employer along with star recommendations from Mentors who’ve worked with you.
Happy International Women’s Day!!
Join us here on our Ethics 1st LinkedIn Live today at 3:00 pm to learn more about the program and get all your questions answered.
Contact [email protected] to learn more.
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“It’s a well-known fact now that AI data sets are really rooted in bias.”
– Toju Duke
“If the systems are very inaccurate right now it’s probably best not to use them – we’re supposed to be saving lives, not allowing more people to die. The problem though is that we are dealing with huge numbers of people; humans alone cannot address those issues, so we do need some form of automation and AI system.”
– Toju Duke
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About the Talk
With Coronavirus and the destructive path it’s forged across all countries, communities and economies, AI is being adopted by private and public entities globally to develop and deploy solutions to track and predict its spread amongst other solutions.
While AI could help reduce the overwhelming strain on health care systems, its algorithms are subject to biases that further deepens societal injustice and inequities across the world.
In this episode of the DataEthics4All Live Fireside Chat, Shilpi Agarwal, Founder of DataEthics4All and Toju Duke, Product Lead at Google discuss the current applications of AI systems on Covid-19 contact tracing, patient diagnosis and health progress across race and diverse groups and the effects these applications have on communities of color which have seen 2-4x more deaths from Covid-19 than what has been expected.
They also discuss how authorities and businesses should approach bias in the the datasets and algorithms AI systems are built on to reduce the systemic injustices being addressed today.
Transcript
0:05 Shilpi Agarwal:
Hello everyone and welcome to DataEthics4All Live, where we talk with data ethics trailblazers about the future of data and AI. I’m your host Shilpi Agarwal, and today’s topic is particularly relevant right now: we are going to talk about bias in AI and in Covid healthcare solutions. It gives me great pleasure to welcome my guest, who is a Google Product Lead for Europe, the Middle East and Africa; she is also the project manager for Women in AI Ireland and founder of VIBE. Please welcome Toju Duke! Welcome to the show!
0:51 Toju Duke:
Thank you Shilpi, and to everyone in the DataEthics4All group, happy to be here!
0:56 Shilpi:
We are so excited to have you! This is a conversation that’s at the top of our minds these days; coronavirus has forced its destructive path across countries, across communities and across economies. This pandemic has taken lives, it has damaged health and produced a historic economic decline. But it seems like Covid-19 has a disproportionate impact on communities of color. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?
1:52 Toju:
Yeah, happy to. I was just thinking about this talk and thinking about how on 31st December 2019 everyone was singing happy new year, there were lots of recounts of what happened in the past decade – the triumphs and the trials, people who have passed away, the companies that have made the highest turnovers and all of that. Everyone was excited to go into the new decade, and come 2020 now – we’re just in the second half of the year – I personally can’t wait for 2020 to be over! A lot of people echo the same sentiments – it’s just been very interesting; there’s been lots of things going on in 2020. And that goes back to the racial injustice and systemic injustice that we’ve seen; and now it’s resurfaced in 2020 with all the things that have happened with Covid-19. The recent Black Lives Matter protests due to killings of black people in the US; racism and systemic injustice have been brought up again, there have always been conversations around them, but I think now more people are beginning to understand what people of color have been talking about for a very long time now. Something struck a chord across everyone because we all watched the video of George Floyd. And I found it really interesting to see how Covid-19 is still a racial problem; it’s almost like people of color, minority groups, disadvantaged groups always get the brunt of anything bad that happens in society, including Covid-19. When you look at data right now
Toju: People of black descent or Latino descent in the US are three times more likely to get the virus, and they’re twice as likely to die.
4:23 Shilpi:
So is there a particular reason why it has impacted minority communities more; is it education, the way we live our lifestyle – what is affecting one versus the other more than usual?
4:41 Toju:
When you look at the data in terms of incomes; people from minority groups are earning half the national average income, and that means that they cannot really apply social distancing measures in their communities – all sharing apartments and sharing houses.
Toju: Then when it comes to their jobs, their jobs are mostly frontline jobs, so even if some of them are middle class doctors and nurses, they’re still jobs right there on the front line, and because they’re already in a disadvantaged community, they need to go to their jobs; most of their jobs they can’t do remotely. So we have jobs like doctors, nurses, bus drivers, shelf stackers, technicians, production line jobs, services jobs – in all these jobs people need to be out there on the front line on public transport, rubbing shoulders with everyone else and being exposed to the virus. I think along those lines as well, there’s been some form of unconscious bias in terms of the treatment that they receive, in terms of doctors showing some form of discrimination to people of color and even in terms of prioritizing who should be treated. I’ve heard stories of people of color being sent back home even when their coronavirus case was severe; those people were not treated, and they died. In a time of pressure, the things inside you come out the most, including all forms of biases and unconscious biases. Doctors are under so much pressure right now; they’re like our soldiers right there on the front lines, taking the bullets of this virus – in that situation it’s very hard for them to make calm, objective decisions when it comes to who they prioritize.
7:53 Shilpi:
So I’m really appalled to hear that about the doctors – they are making the best judgment as much as possible, but we have heard stories, not just sending people of color home, but we have seen that they also send other people home; they treat a younger person more than a senior citizen because they have to make a judgment. I don’t know how they are making this humanitarian judgment, playing God here – but it must be very difficult for them as well, I can imagine, playing God is not easy. Taking the decision of who gets to be treated versus who gets sent home and for how long and and all of that must be hard for them as well. But if they are consciously making any kind of biased decisions then of course that’s not good.
Shilpi: Let’s talk about the apps that are being developed – there are just so many! App-based contact tracing is appealing in part because the coronavirus spread is so stealthy; infected people transmit the virus for days before they develop symptoms, and it can take several more days for public health investigators to learn about the case and confirm it with the testing. These teams have precious little time for traditional contact tracing where they go and interview an infected person, track down everyone who has come in recent contact with them as much as they can recall – I mean it’s hard if somebody asked me what I did over the weekend, I sometimes forget, or even yesterday, right! We do so much, it’s hard sometimes to recall, and then getting those people to self-isolate before they pass on the virus is difficult. By the time you get the data, you have a couple of days to chase people down. So if smartphones could detect the two users who are close enough to share the virus with an app that could alert one person as soon as the other person gets sick, it looks like a promising solution. So how has AI been applied to Covid-19 contact tracing applications and healthcare in general?
10:22 Toju:
I think with contact tracing there’s still a bit of a controversy there, but I’ll just touch on it a little bit. It uses location tracking capabilities on people who have caught the virus, and it helps them determine where they have been and who they’ve been in contact with by looking at their location.
We have a few countries who have adopted it, like South Korea, Taiwan, and of course China integrated it into some of their main apps like their Alipay apps and their recharge apps which are major apps used by lots of people in China.
We have countries in Asia all using these contact tracing apps, we see Europe slowly adopting it as well – but the Norwegian government for instance have decided to drop it mainly due to privacy issues. It’s collecting people’s data, amassing it in a database and AI technologies are meant to be using that data to help provide solutions for Covid-19, but then there’s a big question around regulations of privacy and user data – if I had Covid-19, do I even know where my personal identifiable information is being sent to? I think it probably would be sent to the Irish government, but I have no idea if people in China already have this information because they could be selling it off to third-party apps as well. That’s the major controversy there – if we do not have any proper global regulation around privacy and people’s data, especially around Covid-19, how much do we allow all those countries and companies to use this data? Google and Apple decided to come together and develop some APIs and some technology and said they’re actually going to work together to help improve the contact tracing app to make sure they protect user information as much as possible. So the big tech companies are trying to provide some solutions to this problem, but it’s a major problem. In terms of healthcare overall, there are lots of things that AI is doing, like tracking surveillance around areas that have the most Covid-19 cases; we have chat bots that help answer questions around it; helping with drug development as well. There’s a lot of work around data mining as well, helping to build the data sets that we have and build predictive computer models; there’s lots of literature searches digging deep into all literature to see if any predictions can be made. So a lot has been going on with AI in the background, which is all great news.
14:14 Shilpi:
Today 50 countries including some of the countries that you mentioned – New Zealand, South Korea, Vietnam, some parts of Africa and Europe, Russia, China, India, Australia, some states in the US including North Dakota and Utah – have all implemented contact tracing to some degree. Some have made it mandatory; some have opened their APIs to satisfy the more privacy-conscious citizens, but at the same time you also mentioned how Google and Apple have come together and are trying to provide some guidelines around what the contact tracing app should or shouldn’t do; what data it should or shouldn’t collect. What is disturbing is that 50% of these apps don’t even have any sunset policies or even transparency around what data they are collecting, how long they will be collecting it, even when the pandemic is over. All those are really questions of concerns for privacy-conscious citizens and it has led to a very big debate. And then there are also questions regarding the effectiveness of the measures of contact tracing – do you think it is a viable solution to help with the Covid-19 crisis?
15:42 Toju:
I think it’s a solution that will help reduce the spread, ideally. I’ll give an example from here in Ireland – the numbers were contained a little bit and it got to the stage where we stopped recording any new cases, and the main reason for that is because there was a lot of contact tracing being done.
We didn’t have the app at that time but between the healthcare sector and the police force, they were scrambling around trying to find everyone who the patients had been in contact with to contain the virus.
So I do believe that contract tracing can help contain it to a certain extent, of course it’s not going to provide a solution or any drug development to cure the virus or produce any vaccines, but it should be able to help contain it to a certain extent. In terms of percentage, I can’t give any numbers right now because I haven’t really looked into that and I’m not even sure that data is available yet, but it’s definitely a step towards the right direction.
16:47 Shilpi:
True, true. According to Douglas Leith, computer scientist at Trinity College Dublin, and computer scientist Stephen Farrell there’s two technologies – GPS and bluetooth beacon. Of course we have identified that GPS is not as effective but even with using bluetooth beacon technology, the signal strength is much lower – there are some challenges. When two people are sitting in a restaurant across the table from each other; if they have their phones in their pockets versus if they have their phones on the table the signal that the bluetooth sends is different, and so identifying who came in contact with whom is a challenge. Some of the other challenges are like metal reflection that plays a part in the sending of the signals; the strength of the signals of the bluetooth beacon. So do you know of any other current challenges in AI that could affect the predictions and the results in patient diagnosis and treatment?
17:52 Toju:
What I’ll mention right now is just the prevalence issue that’s been raised recently around bias in AI, because it still goes back to effects and the predictions that any AI system spews out in every industry, including healthcare and Covid-19.
It’s a well-known fact now that AI data sets are really rooted in bias. We’ve had recent issues with the MIT Tiny Images dataset for instance that was pulled a couple of weeks ago mainly because of the issues it had with bias.
Just to give some more context for people who probably don’t know the story; MIT had a data set built in 2008 that was helping spew out high-res images, and it was working with another AI data set called ‘what net’. Now the problem with that is when it assigns a text to an image, it could be very wrong derogatory words – for example it will compile a black man’s picture with a monkey and use the n-word to identify it; or with a woman carrying a baby, it calls her a whore. Because there were a lot of things that were unearthed by research scientists, some of them in Dublin, who actually tested this model and saw that these are sort of outputs that this model brings out, it was announced in the press and MIT pulled it back.
Toju: The problem with that though is a lot of companies have gone ahead to apply this dataset in their AI systems as well – so how much pulling back can we do?
We have Amazon and IBM who have pulled back their facial recognition software because we found out that it has an issue where it doesn’t recognize black skin color; it recognizes more white skin color.
Toju: We have something else around Pulse, which is another data set that was built by university researchers, and it still couldn’t identify black skin – it’s meant to take a blurry pixelated image and identify the person; they inputted Obama’s face into it and Obama came out as a white man, or they put in Muhammad Ali and he came up with blonde hair. It’s not just around the data sets, it’s also around the historical and societal inferences.
So if we have people making these data sets and they’re not exposed to any form of diversity in their thinking, in their societal upbringing, in their interactions with society, then it’s very likely that the data sets will be biased
Toju: In the sense that it’s not going to represent a diverse and inclusive range of people and ethnicities and cultures and genders. The problem with that is if we have any AI systems that spew out predictive solutions for Covid-19, once again we already know what that means – the black communities are being suppressed and oppressed by this. I think that’s part of what’s happening because we do have AI systems that are predicting the severity of the illness; most AI systems that do this work with image and computer visioning or image computing; and if they are using that, these are already rooted in bias because most of them were trained on Imagenet, which is another data set and another model that is biased.
21:33 Shilpi:
Very true. I’m going to pause here and take some live audience questions.
21:41 Terrance Johnson:
If I’m understanding the conversation properly, I don’t see how emerging technology is going to change long-standing and pre-existing human racism and discrimination. It seems like it more so would be used as more of an oppressive tool and weapon, since it primarily appears to be coming from the same bad actors. I kind of spoke to this in your last meeting and it seems to me concerning the whole digital divide
Terrance: the conversation should be talking about how to get more oppressed and vulnerable populations into technology, so as to positively affect their own lives.
23:10 Toju:
I totally agree; whatever is coming down the line is not going to address these issues, we have to take a step back to address those issues. One of the things I’m going to work on in the next few months is examining data sets, coming up with best practices that we can apply in the industry, looking at the amount of bias that we have in the current data sets that people are using; that companies and governments are utilizing, and making sure that there’s some form of transparency and extendability in these AI systems. We have a few tools already out there across the tech industries; Google for instance have something called model cards where you can actually document the different models that you have for your AI systems, and if that’s documented then if someone has a question around the platform or the AI, hopefully those model cards should be able to give some more transparency into why that AI system arrived at the prediction that it made. We also have something called What-If tool, where if that’s implemented at the start of building that algorithm, ideally it should be more transparent and explainable.
I think that’s where ethical AI comes into play, making sure that whatever new AI systems are being spewed out they’re following some form of data ethics, and for the current AI systems, making sure that we do examine them and reveal any biases and any inaccuracies that they have.
Toju: That’s what’s happening today, and that’s why we have Amazon and IBM pulling their facial recognition software; we have MIT calling back widely used data sets, because of these inaccuracies; we have university researchers calling back Pulse as well. So we’ll keep on seeing more of this, but I think what’s important is for all of us to come together; when we identify these things, actually make some noise about it, raise it to the right people.
If more people come together to talk about it, hopefully globally we’ll have some form of regulations that are not too intrusive and not too dependent on the tech companies
Toju: but at the same time signifying there’s still some form of guidance and some form of law and regulations involved. With these third party AI companies, there’s one that is actually being sued by the government now because it used data in the wrong way – that will be avoided. On the flip side as well, like Terrance said:
We need more diverse people working in these industries, working in these teams as AI engineers, data scientists, because if they have more diverse people, the new data sets coming up should represent what they believe in and societal changes.
26:06 Shilpi:
We have just a few more minutes, would anyone else like to ask any more questions?
27:30 Susanna Raj:
I have one question, Toju. Just this morning there was a news release about a data set; it was the largest ever, and they found the same disparity which we already know, but this was more documented. It seems like South Asians and African Americans are disproportionately affected in the health care system. So even though it’s all in the future and we are working on it, what do you think we should do now so that people get access to care in those communities?
28:13 Toju:
Well, if the systems are very inaccurate right now it’s probably best not to use them – we’re supposed to be saving lives, not allowing more people to die. The problem though is that we are dealing with huge numbers of people; humans alone cannot address those issues, so we do need some form of automation and AI system.
Toju: I think for a short-term solution, if we feel that the data sets that have currently been applied are not good enough and are really rooted in bias, it’s best to understand what proportion of these communities, the black and Asian communities, what proportion of them are really being affected – and if it’s a large volume, then we have to ditch the AI model in the short term until it’s fixed, because we can’t provide solutions by killing or oppressing people that have already been oppressed for centuries.
32:14 Shilpi:
In the end, this is an ongoing discussion, we don’t have a clear solution for this – but these are some of the questions we do need to raise, and we need to ask these questions so that we can come up with a better tomorrow. As Dr Maria van Kerkhove, technical leader at the WHO says: “asking the question ‘are we doing enough’, regularly and repeatedly is critical”. With that I want to thank Toju and everyone in the audience who joined us today and helped us with this important topic and interesting conversation. Thank you Toju!
33:06 Toju:
Thank you, it’s been great being here, thanks for having me!
Shilpi Agarwal – Founder & CEO, DataEthics4All
Toju Duke – Product Lead, Google