This article from last fall is a fantastic, thought-provoking read. Here’s the link to the original, and I’ve included some of my favorite bits below:
“Design and engineering consultancies create products for a global market, but the teams themselves rarely have diversity that reflects global perspectives.”
“Female drivers are 47% more likely to be seriously injured in a car crash. … This is starting to shift — in 2011, the first female crash test dummies were required in safety testing ”
Ever noticed that women are often cold in public spaces? The “algorithms that dictate temperature regulation in many office buildings were designed in the 1960s for a 154 pound male” and haven’t changed, affecting workplace productivity in a way that correlates with gender
And, here’s my very favorite:
“We tend to think of data as cold, unbiased facts — but this ignores the fact that the tools we have developed to collect and analyze this data are designed by (fallible) humans. We should be concerned about how prejudices and assumptions can creep into the sphere of data science and exacerbate social inequalities or create higher risks for certain populations.”
Erin Clark Frost 