For a long time, tech culture has focused too narrowly on technical skills; this has resulted in a tech community that too often puts companies and code over people. Greater Than Code is a podcast that invites the voices of people who are not heard from enough in tech: women, people of color, trans and/or queer folks, to talk about the human side of software development and technology. Greater Than Code is providing a vital platform for these conversations, and developing new ideas of what it means to be a technologist beyond just the code. Featuring an ongoing panel of racially and gender diverse tech panelists, the majority of podcast guests so far have been women in tech! We’ve covered topics including imposter syndrome, mental illness, sexuality, unconscious bias and social justice. We also have a major focus on skill sets that tech too often devalues, like team-building, hiring, community organizing, mentorship and empathy. Each episode also includes a transcript. We have an active Slack community that members can join by pledging as little as $1 per month via Patreon. (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode)
215: Gathering Data in Machine Learning with Abeba Birhane
01:41 - Descartes was wrong: ‘a person is a person through other persons’
13:59 - Predicting How People Behave and Act via Machine Learning is Ethically Flawed
- “Measuring” People
- Simon’s Ant
- Abstraction
- Collecting Data
- Confirmation Bias
34:21 - Examining Machine Learning Models and Data
- Means Testing
- Generalized Empathy
“When you get rid of what you don’t want, you do not necessarily get what you do want and you may get something you want a lot less. It is that simple…..anyone that ever watches television knows that!” – Russell L. Ackoff
- “Scoring” People Perpetuates Stereotypes
- Acurracy Confirms Bias
50:09 - Important Ideosyncracies and Contaminating Factors
- Seeing and appreciating the potential to be different in every person in every situation.
- The ability to tease apart existing cultural ideas around identity and humanity.
- Taking concepts from different but related fields and seeing their connectedness and bringing them together into a whole that is more than the sum of their parts.
- Seeing consequences that don’t belong to any one cause.
Reflections:
Mando: Cartesian thinking and worldview is embedded in us.
Avdi: “Contaminating factors.”
“Dive into yourself to find yourself.”
Rein: Jainism has gotten this right for centuries.
- The Elephant and the Blindfolded Men Parable
- The Theory of Conditioned Predication or Contigency
- The Theory of Partial Standpoints
Jessica: Giving the Cartesian program credit for what it’s good for: using science as a way to break things down into parts and studying them deeply; we’ve learned a lot.
Abeba: It’s not all bad. BUT, we forget to put the pieces back together and acknowledge reality.
This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep of DevReps, LLC. To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode
To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps. You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well.)
Special Guest: Abeba Birhane.
Sponsored By:
- Twilio: Businesses all over the world right now are trying to reinvent how they connect with the world. Whether a business is delivering packages, treating patients, or running a global customer support center, their customers need them to invent new ways to stay connected. Twilio is the platform that Fortune 500 companies and startups alike trust to build seamless communications experiences with phone calls, text messages, video calls, and more. Really, the only limit becomes your developer’s imaginations. It’s time to build. Visit twilio.com to learn more.