One day while browsing on Twitter, I stumbled across a tweet which was very interesting - for all the wrong reasons. Its contents were the result of pure racism, from an algorithm.
The tweeter himself -and the guest in this episode - Andre Brock, has a PhD in Library and Information Science and is currently an associate professor at Georgia Tech, where he does research on race and digital media, and teaches engineers to think about ethics and the cultural elements of the software they’re designing.
In this episode, we tell the story behind the tweet, and discuss the effect algorithms are having on people’s lives, today. We talk about whether algorithms are bound to make society worse, or if we can turn it around and use algorithms to create a more just society. We talk about technical fixes to social problems, a bit about AI regulation, and I ask Andre what it would take for him to feel comfortable being assessed by an algorithm again in the future.
Welcome!