 By Davar Ardalan and Robert Malesky
Many of us are familiar with our cultural heritage, but many of us are not. Walk down any street and look at the passersby. What is their ancestry? Nigerian, South African, Swedish? Does it matter whether they know or not? Or if they are aware of their own cultural history? How do they imagine themselves in the dominant culture? Is that even important? Yes, it is important. Understanding one’s own culture and heritage not only develops our sense of pride, but allows one to interact with people of other cultures as an equal, and evolve a deeper, truer understanding of our world and the peoples who inhabit it.  (Photo courtesy of Miguel Gandert) By Davar Ardalan and Kee Malesky
A research assistant at MIT Media Lab was working on facial recognition in social robots, and discovered that the software was unable to detect her face. Why? Because she’s black and the code libraries that software developers draw from are not diverse or inclusive, so her dark skin tone didn’t fit the “normal” model. She had to wear a white mask to get the camera and software to recognize her. That researcher, Joy Buolamwini, went on to found the Algorithmic Justice League to “increase awareness, report bias, and develop practices for accountability in design, development, and deployment of coded systems.”  By Davar Ardalan, Ali Khoshgozaran and Carolyn Ayers
It is no longer possible to imagine a world without machine learning, as industries who refuse to adapt fall further behind. Such a profound paradigm shift only emerges once in a generation and storytellers will play a pivotal role in bringing it all together. Carefully and gracefully, storytellers and data scientists at IVOW are embracing the technology to enhance content creation and distribution in pioneering ways. |
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