Mapping a child's digital footprint across England's state education landscape. Policy recommendations for building a rights' respecting digital environment

Perhaps without even noticing, you have read about data racism several times in the news in the past months. What is it? This blog seeks to explain - in the context of an emerging strand of work at the European Network Against Racism exploring racism in the digital space.

EU countries continue to avoid collecting data on ethnic minorities and ignore persistent problems they face.

Government considers shelving service again as figures suggest evidence of growing inequality. “The excuse is likely to be that businesses are badly hit right now but actually, it is employees, especially women and minorities, who have been badly hit.”

A growing number of firms are using artificial intelligence to pass or fail jobseekers.

Birthrights is convening an inquiry into racial injustice in maternity care, led by an expert panel with barrister Shaheen Rahman QC as Chair.

Childbirth rights group supports examination into disproportionate health outcomes

Rape victims from an ethnic minority background are significantly less likely to see their case lead to prosecutions or convictions, according to a new research paper. In a newly-published report, psychologists at Middlesex University call on the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to improve its guidance on supporting BAME rape survivors to stop them being "disadvantaged further". CPS figures show ...

"By embedding race into the basic data and decisions of health care, these algorithms propagate race-based medicine. Many of these race-adjusted algorithms guide decisions in ways that may direct more attention or resources to white patients than to members of racial and ethnic minorities"

“It’s almost an imperative, I think, to drive that diversity,” she said. “Diversity from a gender perspective, but also from other perspectives such as age, race, ethnicity, geography, and many others, because we’re seeing AI is such a powerful technology, and we need to make sure it is equitable.”

Discusses harms of racial policing practices, potential effects of data driven technologies & opportunities for activism

The current covid-19 pandemic has shined the spotlight on longstanding health inequities for people of color. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, compared to the general United States population, African Americans are 1.4 times more likely to contract the coronavirus, and 2.8 times more likely to die from covid-19.

Image-generation algorithms are regurgitating the same sexist, racist ideas that exist on the internet.

Machines can discriminate in harmful ways. Here's how we fix the problem

Charities warn of ‘devastating effect’ as most vulnerable households left without access to web

Black women more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth

Disparity with white women shows need for action, doctors say, despite slight improvement in mortality rate

Many of the public and private services we use are now digital. The move to digital is likely to increase as technology becomes more embedded in our lives. But what does this mean for how essential public services understand who is using, or indeed not using, them and why? § Data about the protected characteristics of people using these services isn’t currently collected andstatistics aren’t published in a consistent or collective way. This means it is harder tofind out who is excluded from using these services and why.

Tools like GPT-3 are stunningly good, but they feed on the cesspits of the internet. How can we make them safe for the public to actually use? § Sometimes, to reckon with the effects of biased training data is to realize that the app shouldn't be built. That without human supervision, there is no way to stop the app from saying problematic stuff to its users, and that it's unacceptable to let it do so.