Thread by @mindgomes

“The conflict centered on Google’s discomfort with a research paper Gebru planned to publish about ethical issues related to technology that underpins some of the company’s key products.” bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

“Using machine learning and deep learning to make predictions about people is powerful stuff. The ability to see demographic shifts in communities in real time through AI opens up incredible possibilities.”
theselfpreneur.com/people-in-ai-t…

“powerful stuff” in the hands of the powerful

“What’s further fascinating about Gebru is that she is a multiplier! She returned to Ethiopia to teach programming to young students with AddisCoder, a programming bootcamp. +

“The students in this bootcamp were a diverse range, hailing from both rural areas and cities, with male and female gender balance, and accommodating people with disabilities. Some of these students have gone on to earn admission to Ivy League Universities.”

Brain-drain direct to bourgois/ruling-class universities. That’s a major (but little acknowledged) reason for creating conflict zones overseas in my opinion.

“(Gebru) used computer vision algorithms to detect and classify cars in 50 million Google Street View images. We then used the characteristics of these detected cars to predict race, education, income levels, voting patterns and income segregation levels.”