By Betty Vandenbosch, Chief Content Officer at Coursera At Coursera, we believe that learning is the source of human progress — that it has the power to transform our world. In 2020, we strengthened our commitment to address systemic racism through learning. We focused on creating social justice and anti-racism content and elevating Black voices […]
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Tag: RACISM
Systemic racism: What research reveals about the extent of its impact
We spoke to five researchers working to demonstrate the various ways that racial discrimination is embedded in the structures and procedures that underpin US society Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24833093-900-systemic-racism-what-research-reveals-about-the-extent-of-its-impact/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
Software Engineer Catches Intelligent Bot Posting on Reddit
“The posts were appearing at a rate of about one per minute, and the posts were lengthy, most around six paragraphs long…” writes software engineer Philip Winston. I read through some of the posts. The quality was incredibly good, no machine could have written these even a few years ago. However there were some flaws and tells that suggested they were…
What do unconscious bias tests really reveal about racism?
Psychologists have shown that reflexive biases influence our perceptions of others, potentially explaining the persistence of various forms of prejudice. But reliably measuring our implicit biases is trickier than it first appeared Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24732973-400-what-do-unconscious-bias-tests-really-reveal-about-racism/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
Tech Firms Hire ‘Red Teams.’ Scientists Should, Too
The recent retraction of a research paper which claimed to find no link between police killings and the race of the victims was a story tailor-made for today’s fights over cancel culture. From a report: First, the authors asked for the paper to be withdrawn, both because they’d been “careless when describing the inferences that could be made from our data”…
Cisco Fires Workers for Racial Comments During Diversity Forum
During a series of Cisco online all-hands meetings on race in early June, some workers posted comments in message channels that other staff and company management said were demeaning to Black people, exposing racial divisions at the Silicon Valley tech giant and leading to the dismissal of a number of people. From a report: During the first videoconference on June 1,…
How Google Docs Became the Social Media of the Resistance
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: In just the last week, Google Docs has emerged as a way to share everything from lists of books on racism to templates for letters to family members and representatives to lists of funds and resources that are accepting donations. Shared Google Docs that anyone can view and anyone can edit,…
JPMorgan Drops Terms ‘Master,’ ‘Slave’ From Internal Tech Code and Materials
JPMorgan Chase is eliminating terms like “blacklist,” “master” and “slave” from its internal technology materials and code as it seeks to address racism within the company, said two sources with knowledge of the move. Reuters reports: The terms had appeared in some of the bank’s technology policies, standards and control procedures, as well in the programming code that runs some of…
California City Bans Predictive Policing In US First
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: As officials mull steps to tackle police brutality and racism, California’s Santa Cruz has become the first U.S. city to ban predictive policing, which digital rights experts said could spark similar moves across the country. “Understanding how predictive policing and facial recognition can be disportionately biased against people of color, we officially banned…
Wrongfully Accused by an Algorithm
In what may be the first known case of its kind, a faulty facial recognition match led to a Michigan man’s arrest for a crime he did not commit. From a report: On a Thursday afternoon in January, Robert Julian-Borchak Williams was in his office at an automotive supply company when he got a call from the Detroit Police Department telling…