Zofia Niemtus writes for The Guardian about tech startups focused on helping breastfeeding mothers. Niemtus notes that MIT’s second “Make The Breast Pump Not Suck!” hackathon, which focused on marginalized groups in society, resulted in projects like “a pop-up shelf for pumping in unsanitary public places; a lactation kit for use in disaster zones; and a virtual reality app.”
CNBC reporter Courtney Connley spotlights Mareena Robinson Snowden, the first black woman to earn a PhD in nuclear engineering from MIT. Snowden’s advisor, Senior Research Scientist Richard Lanza, says that, “Mareena has that rare combination of passion, enthusiasm and technical and policy expertise."
In a recent blog post, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, Brad Smith, references research by MIT graduate student Joy Buolamwini while calling for government to regulate the use of facial recognition software. Buolamwini’s work “showed error rates of as much as 35% for systems classifying darker skinned women,” reports Dina Bass for Bloomberg.
Katharine Schwab of Co.Design highlights graduate student Joy Buolamwini and Visiting Scholar J. Nathan Matias as “design heroes” for their commitment to keep technology fair. Schwab writes that Buolamwini has forced companies “to develop better, more equitable technology” while Matias helped “reduced the prevalence of fake news.”
In an article for The New York Times, graduate student Joy Buolamwini writes about how AI systems can often reinforce existing racial biases and exclusions. Buolamwini writes that, “Everyday people should support lawmakers, activists and public-interest technologists in demanding transparency, equity and accountability in the use of artificial intelligence that governs our lives.”
Inside Higher Ed reporter Colleen Flaherty writes about a new report from the National Academics of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, co-chaired by Institute Prof. Sheila Widnall, examining the impact of sexual harassment in academia. Widnall explains that in order to eradicate harassment, “all members of campuses -- students, faculty, staff and administrators -- will be needed to promote an inclusive and respectful environment."
In an article for Inside Higher Ed, Colleen Flaherty highlights a study co-authored by Prof. Kathleen Thelen, which examines the gender gap in publication rates for political science journals. “Beyond a general gender gap, Teele and Thelen also found that women remain underrepresented in terms of co-authorship,” writes Flaherty.
Boston Globe reporter Sophia Eppolito writes that during MIT’s 2018 Commencement exercises, speakers stressed the importance of uniting to create a better world. “We all strive to see the world, not as a zero-sum game, but as positive-sum — as a world where generous collaboration makes each collaborator smarter, stronger, and richer in every way,” said MIT President L. Rafael Reif.
Quartz reporter Leah Fessler writes that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s Commencement address at MIT featured a call for graduates to help create more inclusive technologies and workplaces. “It’s not the technology you build that will define you. It’s the teams you build and what people do with the technology you build,” Sandberg advised.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg advocated for MIT graduates to be, “clear-eyed optimists” while speaking at MIT’s 2018 Commencement exercises, reports Ethan Wolff-Mann for Yahoo! Finance. “It’s not enough to be technologists. We have to make sure that technology serves people,” she said.
AP reporter Collin Binkley writes that during her Commencement address at MIT, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg called for equality in the technology sector. "Build workplaces where everyone — everyone — is treated with respect," she said. "We need to stop harassment and hold both perpetrators and enablers accountable. And we need to make a personal commitment to stop racism and sexism."
To prove that the data used to train machine learning algorithms can greatly influence its behavior, MIT researchers input gruesome and violent content into an AI algorithm, writes Benjamin Fearnow for Newsweek. The result is “Norman,” an AI system in which “empathy logic simply failed to turn on,” explains Fearnow.
HuffPost reporter Thomas Tamblyn writes that MIT researchers developed a new AI system that sees the worst in humanity to illustrate what happens when bias enters the machine learning process. “An AI learns only what it is fed, and if the humans that are feeding it are biased (consciously or not) then the results can be extremely problematic.”
Forbes contributor Frederick Daso describes how two female MBA students at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Preeti Sampat and Jaida Yang, started their own venture capital firm in an effort to, “bridge the geographical and diversity gaps in the current early-stage investing ecosystem.”
Writing for The Atlantic, MIT lecturer Amy Carleton describes the focus on public policy, as well as engineering and product design, at this year’s “Make the Breast Pump Not Suck” hackathon. “What emerged [at the inaugural hackathon] was an awareness that the challenges surrounding breastfeeding were not just technical and equipment-based,” explains Carleton.