Data, Tech & Black Communities

“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.”

How did the internet giants come to dominate our world? Big Tech firms are now some of the richest and most powerful entities on the planet – and we’re starting to see the effects of this extreme concentration of power, in the shocking ways these platforms have been used to manipulate our elections, violate our privacy, and threaten the social fabric of our societies. But it hasn’t always been like this: not so long ago, much of Silicon Valley operated on an optimistic, altruistic ethos, aiming to make information free and the world better connected. What happened? In the latest RSA Short, ...

NHS England is facing growing criticism from public health leaders over its failure to publish data on the ethnicity of people who have been vaccinated against covid-19

Concerns about the low take up of vaccines by black & Asian community. Calls for data on ethnicity to be collected as part of vaccine uptake data collection

Stories from across the world on how to make AI more culturally responsive

Mental health symptoms affect your behaviour online. This could be harnessed to improve detection and treatment

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

It’s time we started using it properly.

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.

Implications for not being inclusive of disabilities

It requires us to question everything we assume about the world, and the bodies that inhabit it

How can technology be designed with empathy and justice? How can we connect as UK Black communities to shape technology’s impact on our lives? How might we build back better and fairer? Join us as we help connect Black people with the resources they need for positive impact.

As part of the ONS' drive to ensure that statistics reflect the experiences of everyone in society they have established a new Inclusive Data Taskforce.

Bectu claims broadcasters not transparent enough in sharing data for diversity monitoring initiative Project Diamond to work effectively

We've been tracking some of the misinformation about vaccines that has circulated in minority communities.

The UK government admits it knew its facial mapping tech struggled to work with some skin tones.

Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru investigated the bias of AI facial recognition programs. The study reveals that popular applications that are already part of the programming display obvious discrimination on the basis of gender or skin color. One reason for the unfair results can be found in erroneous or incomplete data sets on which the program is being trained. In things like medical applications, this can be a problem: simple convolutional neural nets are already as capable of detecting melanoma (malignant skin changes) as experts are. However, skin color information is crucial to this p...

This project is part of the Ars Electronica CyberArts Exhibition. Algorithms have become essential elements of our daily lives, used in almost all areas of society: in online searches and navigation, in ratings systems and smart devices or bots, but also in banking, speech and facial recognition, health care, policing, and so on. However, the systems that are developed are never neutral, which means that algorithms may be biased and discriminatory. The Algorithmic Justice League (AJL) is an organization that combines art and research to increase public awareness of the social implications a...

AI Ethics: Global Perspectives is a free, online course designed to raise awareness and help institutions work toward a more responsible use of AI. It brings together leading experts in the field of AI from around the world to consider ethical ramifications of AI and rectify initiatives that might be harmful to particular people and groups in society. We will release videos on a rolling basis. Sign up at bit.ly/ai-ethics-course to get notified about the launch of the course; and future releases!

This year, the technologies that we will most likely hear the most about won’t be fancy devices like smartphones or big-screen television sets. It will be the stuff we don’t usually see: workhorse software and internet products that are finding their moment now. § Connected tech excludes those marginalised by the digital divide or too poor to afford the kit/data.

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

Study reveals rampant racism in decision-making software used by US hospitals — and highlights ways to correct it.

Facial Recognition Technology is being used in a supermarket

Ed Bridges, 37, from Cardiff, brought a legal challenge after having his image captured twice.

How list is compiled also to be reviewed amid claims it blights life chances and is discriminatory