Automating Bias & Ida Bae Wells

“Nikole Hannah-Jones is an award-winning investigative reporter covering racial injustice for the New York Times Magazine. She investigates the way racial segregation in housing and schools is maintained through official action and policy.” website twitter

This is mainly an introduction to a fantastic twitter account. For anyone who perhaps hasn’t read her work, Nikole Hannah-Jones (aka Ida Bae Wells and founder of The Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting) is absolutely brilliant. Recently, when Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) called attention to radicalized computer programming,  this twitter thread was born, calling attention to previous reports that show automated bias.

“But that program’s functioning was detailed in a published report, allowing those with subject-matter expertise to confirm that morally troubling (and constitutionally impermissible) variables — such as race, gender and variables that could proxy the two (for example, ZIP code) — were not being considered.”