The Abuse and Misogynoir Playbook
Disbelieving, devaluing and discrediting the contributions of Black women has been the historical norm. Let’s write a new playbook for AI Ethics.
By Dr. Katlyn Turner, Prof. Danielle Wood and Prof. Catherine D’Ignazio. This article originally appeared in the January Issue of the Quarterly State of AI Ethics Report published by the Montreal AI Ethics Institute. Read the full 20 page article here, starting on page 15.
“…come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.”
-Lucille Clifton
In the past decade, Black women have been producing leading scholarship that challenges the dominant narratives of the AI and Tech industry: namely that technology is ahistorical, “evolved”, “neutral” and “rational” beyond the human quibbles of issues like gender, class, and race. Safiya Noble demonstrates how search algorithms routinely work to dehumanize Black women and girls (Noble 2018). Ruha Benjamin challenges what she calls the “imagined objectivity” of software and explains how Big Tech has collaborated with unjust systems to produce “the New Jim Code”, software products that work to reproduce racial inequality…
