Introduce yourself here!

My name is Michael Ernest. I’m a Director for Technical Alliances at an enterprise AI company called Dataiku. We make a product called Data Science Studio that supports collaboration on AI/ML projects across multiple technical disciplines.

I’m attending this class to learn more about this subject, and to support a colleague in NYC who knows Rachel’s work but can’t attend the course. I intend be a useful note-taker for now. Eventually I want to become a useful resource for my colleagues promoting responsible AI and social justice in their professional and community-driven work.

My academic training is in English literature. A few introductory comp sci courses and some tech training courses aside, I am mostly self-taught in information systems, information technology, programming, Big Data, with a smattering of implementing ML algoithms in distributed frameworks such as Hadoop.

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Hi all,

My name is Mohit (he/him). I’m a product manager building analytics products for school and district administrators at Clever, a K-12 education technology company. In the past I’ve worked on geolocation, maps and storytelling at Microsoft Research, policy tracking at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and building parental safety and control tools for cellphone providers.

I’ve focused on infrastructure, trust and privacy issues as an engineer and designer since graduating from the master’s program at the UC Berkeley School of Information. I have a interdisciplinary background in information science, user research and design and love working at the intersection of technology and social infrastructure.

The ethics issues around machine learning and AI are new to me, as I’ve focused mostly on location data, student data policy and children’s privacy. I’m excited to learn from the diverse backgrounds and approaches that everyone brings to this group!

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Hi Raquel! I lived in Peru for two years, and just wanted to say hi.
My mother is Cuban, and what you said about being Latinx resonated with the way I have seen my mom experience life here, and also, in some ways, the way I experience being a “mixed” American in both north and south America. Hope we can meet! -Mo

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Hey Mo! nice to meet you!

Thanks for your message, Amulya! I would be happy to hear about your training sometime.

Hi everyone,

I’m Bo and I work in sales at Okta, a software security company. I just graduated from Santa Clara University in June 2019 where I double majored in Philosophy and Communication, so clearly a non-technical background. I took several classes in technology ethics in undergrad and I am excited to continue my education! Some of my coursework included Ethics of AI, Ethics of Criminal Justice, Philosophy of Science, and more.

I’ve lived and worked in San Francisco for just about 6 months now and I am loving it so far! Okta is an excellent company to work for, with a really great company culture that makes for an awesome first job to transition from college to the workforce. I am really enjoying sales so far, as I feel like I am garnering a lot of transferrable skills that I think will be useful throughout my career.

I am taking this class both because of my deep personal interest in tech ethics & policy, but I am also evaluating what steps I should take as far as continuing my education. I know that I want to go back for more schooling, I just haven’t decided what exactly. That could be an MBA, a Master’s in something like Public Policy (focus in tech policy), or something more outside of my comfort zone!

For personal interests, I’m originally from Missoula, Montana, so I love to do pretty much anything outdoors. I grew up doing a lot of hiking, camping, snowboarding, whitewater rafting, mountain biking, and fishing. I try to get out of the city and get outside as much as I can!

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Hi my name is Erin Pangilinan.

Shameless plug: I previously published the O’Reilly Media book, Creating Augmented and Virtual Realities: Theory and Practice for Next-Generation Spatial Computing, which is distributing 2 dozen countries and will be translated into Chinese and Korean later this year.

I am currently working on my next book, Designing Our Virtual Futures: Building A Framework for Human Centered Technology which covers the technology of AI, AR, VR, and blockchain. Prior I was also a fellow in the Oculus Launch Pad program. Currently also working as a startup adviser for early stage startups in the blockchain/cryptocurrency/eSports spaces debating if I’ll stay permanently FT in AR VR as this other spaces has grown exponentially and with principles related more aligned to my values and ethics than in others with more centralized philosophies.

I am a software engineer and computational designer hybrid (I code and design, the two for me are not mutually exclusive and it’s been a challenge to fight dominant paradigms that I feel compartmentalize many spaces that are actually interdisciplinary and are well understood in combination, one without the other for me is hard for any product to scale and suffice).

Early in my career, I worked electoral and issue-based campaigns, in particular for electoral campaigns to elect Barack Obama (Obama for America) and Ro Khanna (Ro for Congress) - who is currently the chair of the Bernie Sanders campaign (no that’s not an endorsement, I have friends in every party and electoral candidate campaign camp), ranging from roles in digital strategy, fundraising, ethnic media outreach, press, and more etc.

I was also a previous student in the USF Deep Learning Program and a Diversity there as well for two terms and it’s been a privilege to learn from Rachel and Jeremy in a manner that was more accessible than any other courses in AI that I have taken.

My interest in this subject has to do with human centered design in emerging tech and coming up with different frameworks and perspectives on the topic which range from anti (opt-out solutions), to modified solutions, and those who are not in the picture at all (those who are stuck as end consumers that may have less technical knowledge in general) that are impacted by the technologies that billions use everyday.

Lastly, I co-founded 2 diversity and inclusion non-profits, national 501©(3) non-profit, FilipinX Americans in STEAM (FASTER) and ARVR Academy, focused on women and underrepresented communities in emerging tech, with focuses on education, professional development, and innovation.

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Hi all!

I’m Jackie Johnson. I am an SF native working at a non profit called Humanity United. We work around the world, with our main focus being peacebuilding and forced labor and human trafficking. I support our strategy and legal teams. Responsible data has been a topic of conversation at our office, so I’m hoping to learn more about data ethics and how that can be applied to marginalized people. I’m new to the non profit world. In college I majored in Hospitality & Tourism Management. I’m happy to see people from so many different backgrounds and I’m excited to learn from and engage with you all.

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Hi Everyone, happy to be here and sorry for the late intro. My name is Ricardo also know as Zeta since I was a kid.

As background, I have an engineering degree in Computer Science and I have been interested in data and machine learning since the early years of my studies. I worked as an undergrad in a “Computational Intelligence” lab in a time where almost no tools existed, so you had to get the gradients by hand and implement the feedforward algorithm and gradient descent your self to make it work. Professionally I have worked in a few startups and companies. Recently I joined Lyft to work in pricing, before I worked for Google building forecasting models, and before that I worked for a startup doing NLP. Recently I got increasingly interested in data ethics because I see the impact that my work can have in individual lives and is important to be proactively looking for potential pernicious bias and data feedback looks in the work i’m doing. I wanted to expand my mental framework to think about it beyond mathematical metrics and improving model performance.

In terms of personal interests I have a 2-year and 4-year old daughters to which happily my wife and I dedicate most of our energy these days. I’m from Chile where I grew up and lived most of my life. I moved to Mountain View 10 years ago where I have lived since. I love mountaineering, (we have many big mountains in Chile), practicing aerial fabrics, and reading science fiction books.

Hi! I’m Larissa (she/her).

I worked at OpenAI on building the gym-retro library (1,000+ retro game RL training environments), and then developed, designed, and managed the Scholars program and the Fellows programs.

I’m currently interested in understanding how AI / increased automation will impact the future of work. You can read my post, which draws parallels between 1820’s England and the present-day with regards to rolling out and governing new technologies that displace labor, here.

My background also includes film (USC film production graduate for undergrad), and I have worked in film, games, as well as tech.

Sorry I’m so late to the party! If you want to talk to me, please find me - I usually sit in the front row.

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