S03E09 | Data is Us: Interview with Rumman Chowdhury

Blaming biased data and bad algorithms? Stop moral outsourcing to machines because data is a reflection of us! Liz and Xine interview Rumman Chowdhury, PhD candidate in political science and a full-time data scientist. We talk about how ethics, diversity, and social justice play an integral part in data, dubious robots, and the uneven development of data science through industry and academia. Beyond tin foil hats, we discuss everything from racist redlining in Chicago, philosopher Hannah Arendt's concept of the banality of evil, Netflix's Luke Cage, and menstruation apps. How can we approach data in a way that is not reductive? How can the quantitative not come at the cost of the qualitative? Rumman works at Metis, an organization dedicated to data science training that has scholarships for women, people of color, veterans, and LGBTQ+ people. (www.thisismetis.com) Check out more about her work and for job postings in data scientist at www.rummanchowdhury.com and follow her on Twitter @ruchowdh