Hey Siri..How can tech do it for the culture? w/ Madison Jacobs

In this episode Madison and I talk about how white folks have a special way of infusing racism into anything, even tech! As much as we rely on tech in our everyday lives, we have to understand who it’s built by AND who it’s built for! Tech is racist because it’s created by racists, and unfortunately it makes their ability to oppress and silence people of color much easier. We talk about how things like facial recognition on our phones are built from white features, down to facial recognition for criminalization, and the algorithms that shadowban or simply erase people's lived experiences & education. 

ABOUT MADISON

Madison Jacobs is a marketing and communications leader, tech policy practitioner, and civil rights champion working as the cofounder of The Edtech Equity Project (EE) to combat racial bias in edtech products and AI tools used in education. She is also an executive director at A/B Partners, a social justice creative agency developing new narratives about people, power and social change to transform politics and the economy. Before her work at EE and A/B, Madison was a nonprofit communications leader and an Aspen Institute fellow. At the Aspen Tech Policy Hub, Madison built technology policy outputs on issues like improving access to water quality data, improving women's access to algorithmically-granted housing loans, and mitigating racial bias in AI-driven education technologies. Before her work in nonprofit and tech policy, Madison worked at several technology startups and companies, including Google, leading product marketing initiatives. Madison has a journalism degree from The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.

IN THIS EPISODE, WE TALK ABOUT

• The fact that all of the systems that were already racist before are just being supported in a larger way by technology. 
• The impact of facial recognition, google searches, and more on communities of color.
• How these systems were only designed to really think through one thought process and that's a middle aged white male. 
• The lack of ebonics, varied forms of speech, and context available in AI language detectors. 
• They done took it a level deeper on the job applications! Machines run more than just names, race, and ethnicity to exclude job applicants. 
• How we need to take a look at the culture of technology and understand its origin.
• We need to be having real conversations with ourselves about how we engage with tech to combat what is happening.

CALL TO ACTION

• AI in Education Toolkit for Racial Equity: https://coda.io/@edtechequity/edtech-ai-toolkit-for-racial-equity
• School Procurement Guide: https://coda.io/d/School-Procurement-Guide_dYBoc7ujwQA/School-Procurement-Guide_su9mx#_luz2W
• Join me on podia where you can get access to tons of BTS content including a very special Weezionaire interview with all of our guests!
• Rate & review the show!
• Follow me on IG

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cyVQQJsSzwAbvSrojmtxnCP4orm6YSpU

FOLLOW WEEZE TO STAY ENGAGED 

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FOLLOW MADISON

Website: https://www.edtechequity.org

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themaddierae/

EdTech’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/EdTechEquity

Madison’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/madisonrjacobs