Abstract

Critical information scholars continue to demonstrate how technology and its narratives are shaped by and infused with values, that is, that it is not the result of the actions of impartial, disembodied, unpositioned agents. Technology consists of a set of social practices, situated within the dynamics of race, gender, class, and politics. This talk, stemming from the recent book, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, addresses the issues of racial equity and public interest technologies that could foreground civil and human rights in the 21st century movements for AI.

Biography

Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the Department of Information Studies where she serves as the Co-Director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry. She also holds appointments in African American Studies and Gender Studies. She is the author of a best-selling book on racist and sexist algorithmic bias in commercial search engines, entitled Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (NYU Press), which has been featured in the New York Public Library 2018 Best Books for Adults (non-fiction). Her academic research focuses on the design of digital media platforms on the internet and their impact on society. Her work is both sociological and interdisciplinary, marking the ways that digital media impacts and intersects with issues of race, gender, culture, and technology. Dr. Noble is the co-editor of two edited volumes: The Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Culture and Class Online and Emotions, Technology & Design.

CCS Concepts

• Applied computing~Arts and humanities

Keywords

Racism; algorithms; search engines

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Converted from the ACM version of record under supplied ACM authorization.