Unwrapped: Racial Bias Within Artificial Intelligence

Wednesday, June 12, 2019 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

Unwrapped: Racial Bias Within Artificial Intelligence

RAISE is launching a speaker series partnering with each faculty to explore themes of xenophobia, racism, and intersectionality within various topics of academia. The series is called "unwrapped" because their mission is to peel back the layers of systemic and institutional bias which exist within the academic realm. Starting Spring 2019, RAISE will be hosting professors, alumni, and undergraduate students from varying disciplines to lead a discourse to engage students and faculty on this topic.

The opening event will be held with Engineering Society and focused on the topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI)!

As the capabilities of artificial intelligence continue to expand at an increasing rate, various implementations of this technology have become more prevalent in our everyday lives. We now rely on AI not only for the automation of menial quantitative labour but are also entrusting it with complex qualitative tasks in fields that hold significant impact over the lives of human beings (criminal justice, healthcare, job screening). Because of the potential human cost involved in these areas, it has become increasingly important to investigate whether the systems that make these qualitative judgments do so in an objective manner. The purpose of this discussion is to examine the potential racial biases that exist within popular implementations of artificial intelligence.

The panellists for this event are:

  • Yasmin Ahmed - student, Management Engineering
  • Audrey Chung - PHD candidate, Vision and Image Processing Group
  • Carla Leal Ramos - student, Management Engineering


Drinks and snacks will be provided - RAISE and the Engineering Society look forward to seeing you there!