And why computer science needs help from the humanities — About nine months ago, I applied for the GRFP — a PhD fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF). In the application, I proposed to research how computer scientists encode ethics and values into machine learning algorithms, and how ML designers can better understand the societal implications of their design…

The Politics of Social Media — Internet • Policy • Fake News • Tech • Algorithmic Harm • Society What was the world like before social media? How did society look before Six Degrees, Friendster, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, Instagram, and Facebook? In 2004, MySpace became the first social media site to reach 1 million…

You are the conductor of a run-a-way trolley that is hurtling down its track at 85 miles an hour, heading straight for a group of young boys playing on the tracks, blissfully unaware of their impending doom. You realize that you can pull a lever to switch the trolley to…

Transparency • Corruption • Collaboration • Trust — Data science is truly an interdisciplinary field. Mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists, social scientists, database administrators, data engineers, graphic designers, UI experts, journalists, storytellers, researchers, and business administrators are among many individuals involved in the process. As machine learning and AI continue to advance, philosophers and ethicists will hopefully be included…

Trust • Corruption • Transparency • DataViz • Journalism I’m currently volunteering at a data journalism startup in Cali, Colombia. In the past two weeks I’ve had meetings with business owners, students, mayoral candidates, and government officials to dive deep into data. I’ve learned some interesting things. The city of…

Stories From Colombia and Venezuela — Story # 1 It was a Sunday afternoon. Dark clouds filled every inch of the sky. The cobblestone streets felt eerily empty, most merchant stands had been abandoned for morning Mass. Terracotta roofs soaked up the gentle drips of rain. Several blocks away church bells clanged over one another in a dissonant harmony. …

Science has always been a race to the finish line. In 1945, the United States placed first in the race to create a nuclear weapon. In 1961, the Soviet Union placed first in the race to send a man to space. …

Two months ago, I graduated college with a degree in Software Engineering. Now that I’ve had about 5 years of coding under my belt, I can genuinely say that I’ve felt confused by technology exponentially more times than I have understood it. I know I’m not alone in this regard. …

It’s easy to keep ethics away from a topic that is hard to understand — It might be a widely known fact, but I was definitely shocked to learn that the inventor(s) of bitcoin is (are) anonymous. Was a hidden identity meant to act as a metaphor for blockchain’s online anonymity? …