Category: In The News

Happy World Emoji Day!

7/17/2020

Happy World Emoji Day! (Yes, it's a real thing!)

Time to celebrate your favorite emoji and reflect on the technologies that we use, but often take for-granted, every day. I reflect on emoji in my research, asking the question, "What do emojis have to do with race?" Turns out, quite a bit!

As a part of World Emoji Day, my research on whiteness and emoji skin-tone modifiers was featured in an interview with NPR's Janae Pierre from WBHM, and in this news write up from the University of Alabama.

If you are interested in learning more about the research behind these interviews, you can read about the study I conducted in 2019 with my co-author Kelsea Whaley called Technically white: Emoji skin-tone modifiers as American technoculture.

Interview with Radical AI podcast

6/17/2020

I had the absolute pleasure of talking with Jess and Dylan, the hosts of the Radical AI podcast, about the ethics of chatbots, virtual assistants, and emoji design. They were really gracious and fun to talk with, and I can't say enough good things about the quality of their podcast. I highly recommend subscribing to the Radical AI podcast and soaking up all of the wisdom from their conversations with leading scholars in technology and media studies. (A great podcast to use in class and assign for students as well!)

Subscribe or listen to the episode here!

What is socially responsible AI? Broad Science podcast ep available

4/9/2020

I was interviewed by the amazing folks at Broad Science for their podcast several months ago. Broad Science is "an initiative dedicated to making science inclusive, engaging, and intersectional," and focuses on "telling science stories from the voices and perspectives that often get overlooked and go untold." I love what they are all about, and recommend checking out their full list of podcast eps on soundcloud.

This episode entitled "What is socially responsible AI?" (aired April 3rd, 2020) features interviews with myself, Dr. Timnit Gebru, Surya Matu, and Dr. Kirk Bansak. The interviewers cover a ton of ground in this episode, including racial profiling, machine bias, interface design, and issues of diversity and inclusion in STEM. We discussed issues of gender and labor in virtual assistant design including the impacts of these technologies in society and broader questions about AI ethics. All of these interviews are fabulous; I start around 42:00, but definitely take the time to listen to the whole thing!

Thank you to Broad Science for reaching out to me, and wonderful job on this episode!

Available at Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/broad-science/what-is-socially-responsible-ai

Google Assistant in the news

5/17/2018

Google's recent I/O developer conference on May 8th, 2018 made waves with the announced updates for the Google Assistant. Among these updates were new features to promote more "natural" conversational applications. Among these updates are six new voice options that include John Legend's musical voicings... a new twist to add some celebrity branding to the palette of customization. Other controversial adds are a "politeness" feature for aimed at children to "encourage polite conversation". Yikes! So much to unpack in all of this. Moneyish's Nicole Pesce reached out to me for some thoughts on these updates and what it all means for the landscape of feminized virtual assistants. Browse her write up of our (very brief) conversation on this here. More thoughts (and far more developed thoughts) to follow in some of my academic pieces under way!

Interview with ABC's Science Friction Podcast

8/11/2017

Several weeks ago ABC's Natasha Mitchell reached out to talk with me about AI, chatbots, gender, and sexism for the Science Friction podcast. You can check out the full podcast episode with my interview starting around minute 8, or read the corresponding article with the interview highlights. Thank you, Science Friction, for thoughtfully covering these issues and featuring my research!

Shout out from post, "When Robots are an Instrument of Male Desire"

7/18/2017

There has been surging interest in sexism in Artificial Intelligence design, largely because there are so many heinous examples to point to right now. This article, "When Robots are an Instrument of Male Desire," by Katherine Cross from The Establishment points to the debacle that was Tay AI, and loops in the standard players like Siri, Cortana, and even Microsoft's Ms. Dewey, with whom I am intimately familiar. I was pleased to come across this article and see some of my research on Ms. Dewey as a part of the conversation! Cheers, Katherine!

Interview, Popaganda: Fembots

1/5/2017

Bitch Media's Sarah Mirk interviews me about Microsoft's Ms. Dewey as a part of the Popaganda podast's episode about Fembots. I recommend the entire podcast, but if you don't have to time, be sure to tune in to my discussion about Microsoft's Ms. Dewey in the third segment, "Siri, are you real?"