Meredith Broussard and Alondra Nelson: Bias Is More than a Glitch

The data journalist and NYU professor discusses confronting race, gender, and ability biases in tech.

In-person registration for this event has sold out. A limited number of standby tickets will be available on the night of the event.

The word glitch implies an incidental error, as easy to patch up as it is to identify. But what if racism, sexism, and ableism aren't just bugs in mostly functional machinery—what if they're coded into the system itself? In her new book, Meredith Broussard demonstrates how neutrality in tech is a myth and why algorithms need to be held accountable. A data scientist and one of the few Black female researchers in artificial intelligence, Broussard explores facial recognition technology that favors light skin, mortgage-approval algorithms that encourage discriminatory lending, and the dangers of medical diagnostic algorithms trained on insufficiently diverse data. 

In conversation with Alondra Nelson, Broussard discusses More than a Glitch and solutions that aren’t about making tech more inclusive, but rather rooting out the algorithms that target certain demographics as “other” to begin with. 

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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Meredith Broussard is Associate Professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University and Research Director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology. She is the author of Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World (MIT Press). Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, BBC, Wired, The Economist, and more. She appears in the 2020 documentary Coded Bias and serves on the advisory board for the Center for Critical Race & Digital Studies. More information at @merbroussard or meredithbroussard.com.

Alondra Nelson is the Harold F. Linder Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study. A former deputy assistant to President Joe Biden, she served as acting director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Including her in the list of "Ten People Who Shaped Science in 2022," Nature said of Nelson's OSTP tenure, “this social scientist made strides for equity, integrity and open access.” An acclaimed researcher, Nelson is the author of several books, including The Social Life of DNA. Her essays, reviews, and commentary have been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, BBC, Wired, and Science. Nelson is a distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Council of Foreign Relations, and the National Academy of Medicine.

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In-Person | Assistive listening devices and/or hearing loops are available at the venue. You can request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation or CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) captioning service by emailing your request at least two weeks in advance of the event: email accessibility@nypl.org or use this Gmail template. This venue is fully accessible to wheelchairs. A visual navigation guide is available here.

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Meredith Broussard © Devin Curry
Alondra Nelson © Dan Komoda