You have 60 minutes including a ten minute break. 4 questions. As a group, decide when in the 60 minutes you want to take your break.
Assign one member of your group as note taker, and another as presenter.
Then, individually, read the following article:
"Racial bias in a medical algorithm favors white patients over sicker black patients" by Carolyn Y. Johnson, for the Washington Post. Published Oct 24, 2019.
After having read the article above, discuss the following questions and keep notes on your answers. Bullet points are fine.
You can keep the notes in a text file, a secret gist, a blank piece of paper, or anywhere else, as long as you'll be able to share it with your teacher when you're done. Add a note also about who is on your team and what topic you're discussing about.
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Discuss the article. What did you find confusing and/or insightful?
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The algorithm discussed in the article was specifically designed to ignore race, yet still produced racist results. The article mentions several reasons why this is the case. List three.
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Do you think algorithms can be objective? Why or why not?
Hint: You may find it useful to think about the following questions:
- Algorithms require data. Where does data come from? Who collects it? For what purposes?
- Thinking about your midterm project, what sort of data does the project work with? Could there be other data related to your app that your app isn't working with? What effects might this have on the final app?
- Who programs algorithms? What unconscious biases might they have?
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As web developers, how might we build software in ways that minimize the risk of introducing racial bias into our algorithms?