Musings on technology and justice
We visited Maun with our family in December. Located near the eastern edge of the Okavango delta, it possesses a still, quiet beauty. We took a short plane ride over the delta. As I look again at the images taken that day, I am struck by the fractal quality of the images. How do you […]
Read More The fractal beauty of MaunYesterday I came across a photo of two gentlemen sitting outside of my old grad-school student lounge. They are Sasha Beilinson and Vladimir Drinfeld, two mathematicians from my alma mater who were awarded this year’s Wolf Prize in Mathematics. The CS department at the University of Chicago shared space with Mathematics and Statistics in my […]
Read More The Wolf prize mathematicians outside my nookIf you’re in sales, it pays to call (and email, and chat) early and often. This intuitive insight comes from a recent study, “Research on 200 Million Sales Interactions Cracks the Code on Cadences” published by Atlanta startup SalesLoft. This data was shared with me by Butler Raines, SalesLoft’s Head of Product — a dear friend, beautiful […]
Read More Call (and email and chat) early and often!Can the resistance inspire a new generation of mathematicians? Samuel Hansen thinks so. In his recent post on The Aperiodical, he describes how the recent avalanche of math-informed court decisions on gerrymandering in Pennsylvania and elsewhere are putting mathematics in the spotlight. It is really heartening that discrete geometry and other branches of advanced mathematics can be use […]
Read More Mathematicians, rock the vote!In the US, the African American scholar (and February 1st Google doodle subject) Carter G Woodson began working in 1926 to establish “Negro History Week“, for in Woodson’s day the contributions of Black people were “overlooked, ignored, and even suppressed by the writers of history textbooks and the teachers who use them.” Woodson’s Negro History week evolved into today’s […]
Read More Black history month is Black mathematicians month — in the UKSeems like a strange combination! But the US Census Bureau has been posting a series of infographics called Stats for Stories that are meant to inspire data driven journalism and blogging. For Super Bowl 52, they produced the following infographic comparing the Philadelphia and the Boston metro areas in terms of snack food manufacturers, breweries, […]
Read More The Census and the Super BowlMy colleague Carly Stambaugh has created an amazingly poetic neural network. Here’s your chance to check out the latest in post-modernist poetry and learn some more about LSTMs.
Read More Poetic A.I.A.I. and Big Data Could Power a New War on Poverty is the title of on op-ed in today’s New York Times by Elisabeth Mason. I fear that AI and Big Data is more likely to fuel a new War on the Poor unless a radical rethinking occurs. In fact this algorithmic War on the Poor […]
Read More AI and the War on PovertyWired recently posted a piece on several of the ethics-related workshops and talks at this year’s NIPS conference. The article includes coverage of the Black in A.I. and Woman in Machine Learning workshops as well as talks like Victoria Krakovna’s on interpretability for A.I. safety.
Read More Wired article on ethics in AI systemsThe Black in AI workshop at this year’s NIPS conference could be among the most important events in artificial intelligence this year. Why? If you think the AI in your phone, car, or bathroom is free of racist or sexist biases, then respectfully give this op-ed by mathematician Cathy O’Neil a close read and begin educating yourself. Further, […]
Read More Black in A.I.
Charles write here 