In a packed room at City Hall on Monday, Council Member James Vacca heard testimony from city officials, technologists, and civil rights advocates on his proposed legislation for transparency in the use of algorithms for city services. Vacca said that the legislation is, to the best of his knowledge, the first of its kind in the United States. Although most of the testimony was in favor of the proposed legislation, the hearing revealed a schism between the tech community as represented by the trade nonprofit Tech.NYC—whose dozens of members include giants like Facebook and Google, as well as smaller companies like Meetup and Civic Hall—and the technologists who testified as individuals.
Tag Archives: algorithms
Civicist: How Meetup Counters Algorithmic Sexism
Bias against women in the technology sector is still unfortunately pervasive. In a recent survey, only eight percent of female technologists said that they had never experienced gender bias in the workplace. The same study cited other problems in the sector with regards to women, including underrepresentation and a lack of networking opportunities and mentorship. These biases can make their way into the systems that increasingly shape our world, but the technology company Meetup has tried to design their recommendation system so that women are not pigeonholed or left out because of their gender. Read more…
Jessica S. McKenzie 