Spools by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay The road to social justice runs through the classroom On Monday, June 17, U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, announced that he would push for a warning label on social media platforms advising parents that using the platforms might damage adolescents’ mental health. Starting in 2021, our education justice series addressed the dangers to public health that the digital data dimension of education can present, while Dr. Murthy formally declared online misinformation an urgent threat to public health. Now three years later, he has escalated the war ..read more

by Kim Owens On Thursday, May 9 at Blankspaces in Santa Monica a multi-faceted, multicultural group of creators, technologists, filmmakers, lawyers, students, and business folks gathered for "Gen AI in Creative Workflows: Balancing Innovation and Ethics,” to listen and learn from the two esteemed speakers. Laura Randant Crenshaw is an entrepreneur, inventor, and the CEO of Mythulu, a company whose tools are designed to “challenge the stagnant pool of tropes and cliches that clutter your creativity” and Faith 'Aya' Umoh is a data scientist, media artist, and the founder of Creative Aya and Imm ..read more

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash  Healthcare workers who use the advancements of digital interventions to support equitable healthcare will be the drivers of clinically significant outcomes by Alana Nash It’s no secret that our society has become ever more confused on how to navigate the healthcare system! The healthcare team used to consist of clinical staff and administrators working together to care for patients. Over time, electronic medical records have become more complex and tedious, compliance standards have grown to require coursework and consultants to fully compr ..read more

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay Guest article by Mary Lang Truth will never be the same: Responsible AI requires diverse perspectives Educational justice means education for all and for each, with the guiding principle that all students should receive the education they deserve. Every student deserves an education that equitably equips and empowers them to realize their greatest potential in ways relevant to their world. Our world deserves students who have received just educations. In the years since the first installments of this series on K–12 educational justice, we have s ..read more

What an honor to be able to thank the LA Tech4Good volunteer team – who make *everything* possible! – during National Volunteer Week. It is humbling to reflect on expertise and passion that our volunteers contribute to make our data equity work so impactful. Mil gracias a: ? Our Steering Committee: Cindy Lin (Workshop Operations and Partnerships); Eva Sachar (Director of Advocacy and inaugural member of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s AI Safety Institute Consortium); Rachel Whaley (Data Equity Program Lead, who’s designed and led public and corporate workshops since ..read more

– Erin Relford, Privacy Engineer at Google Edge cases in privacy are what keep me passionate about working in technology—particularly those arising from autonomous behavior and AI engagement within our tech products and services. We see this play out already with self-driving cars and food delivery robots. These emerging interactions are rapidly reshaping how privacy engineers approach their work. As technology grows more sophisticated, the lines blur between privacy, security, safety, and ethics. Often we overlook potential privacy dilemmas that these technologies pose to women and underrepr ..read more

We feel compelled to speak and urge you to join the global chorus against the war on Gaza. The attempt to expel Palestinians from Gaza brings to mind images of the forced expulsion of Armenians from the Ottoman Empire during World War I, the Trail of Tears – “Indian Removal” – from the American South in the mid 1800s, and, yes, Jews being loaded onto trains to be sent to concentration camps by Hitler Germany in WW2. Palestinians’ land was stolen 75 years ago in the Nakba and therein lies a major source of the “Middle East problem.” It also brings to mind its very opposite: the 40 days of ..read more

Arriving at the Los Angeles Convention Center! –Cindy Lin, author This past Friday, I presented “Our Responsibility to Build an Ethical Data Culture” at the annual Society of Women Engineers’ conference in Los Angeles. This session was a brief introduction on Data Equity and Ethics as it applies to the Data Culture Framework (developed by me at Cindy Lin Consulting), sharing unethical data practices and ways to counteract them. Much of the content was the application of principles learned in LA Tech4Good’s Data Equity workshop to my framework. I was very pleased to speak with a multi-generati ..read more

LA Tech4Good statement on the Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay –by Eva Sachar Milestone Directive! On October 30th, 2023, the Biden-Harris Administration released the Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence. The executive order marks a significant stride in AI regulation and includes measures that address data ethics and equity. Thus far, efforts to develop responsible AI have been largely voluntary and driven by academia, nonprofits, and subsets of the ..read more

Exploring Data Equity with Karen Borchgrevink, Founder of LA Tech4Good  –By Tirelle L.M. Barron Imagine residing at the crossroads of technology and ethics, advocating for transparency and fairness in a world often obscured by jargon and complex systems. Welcome to the domain of data equity, a rapidly emerging field that is playing an increasingly critical role in various sectors from technology to healthcare, and academia to nonprofits. To get a better understanding, I traveled to Echo Park, Los Angeles, where I had the pleasure of speaking with Karen Borchgrevink, the founder of LA Tech ..read more