Leveraging data science and AI to promote social justice, sustainability and equity

As we gradually emerge from the pandemic with tech more deeply embedded in our daily lives, issues relating to the scope and use of the vast amounts of data being collected, such as data security, and the use of predictive technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) are becoming increasingly important. This rise in prominence has meant that awareness of the'darker' side of AI, as highlighted by mainstream hits on Netflix such as Coded Bias, and specifically the ways in which machine learning algorithms have led to greater discrimination and inequalities is on the rise. Technology itself, and the data we collect on a daily basis, is not inherently'good' or'bad'. However, as humans, we can program our biases into the technology we create. Existing racial, social, and gender biases can be programmed into the algorithms we develop, often unconsciously, or the data that are available to train algorithms, biased in nature, inevitably affects the outputs.