Thread by @juliehubs, I want to tell a story about AI, ethics, and the bigger [...]

I want to tell a story about AI, ethics, and the bigger problem of education.

I, as I often say, have a liberal arts degree from a non tech school. This made finding a job out of college in the tech world really hard. 1/?

I got very lucky and got a job at Microsoft. Someone saw potential in me, and gave me an opportunity. I worked in a lot of different areas but one of the most notable was Prototyping and Incubation aka the OG HoloLens team. I LOVED working there. I also HATED it. 2/?

I loved it because I got to be creative and try new things and really flex my brain. I hated it because I was the only person with a liberal arts degree. This caused me to think about the humanitarian impact of our creations, and bring them up. 3/?

"Why are we building this? What is the purpose?" - I would ask.
"It's cool!" - Would be the answer from my coworkers.

The technology could be tracking humans and reporting their emotions. They would not see the possible problem with doing that. It is cool, but also wrong 4/?

I should note that most of this team went to one of 4 colleges (about 40% of my team came from the same province in Canada), or had worked at Microsoft for over 10 years. 5/?

This led to me being seen as a negative person on the team, not wanting to build anything and not being a team player. I never said, "Don't build it". I only asked "Why?" Do we all see how this is kinda screwy? 6/?

If you run a company or have power at a company, try hiring from different backgrounds because of their perspective. Make sharing perspective and asking questions welcome. Reward the people who ask the difficult questions. Seek out those people. 7/?

They are going to piss you off, but remember they are not being malicious. They genuinely want everyone to succeed. If you don't hire diversely from background, you end up with places firing you for speaking out against AI and Ethics (looking at
@timnitGebru
) 8/?

"So how does this relate to education?" We rely so much on where someone goes to school to tell us whether they are successful. What I wanted to do when I was 18 is very different than what I am doing now. Would you trust a teenager to make a life altering decision for you? 9/?

"Hi, this 18 year old said that Pokemon cards are worth millions, so I am gonna invest all my money ever in Pokemon cards."

YOU SOUND DUMB.

I bet that 18 year old thinks they are right too. 10/?

The human brain is not done forming until you are 26... why do you think an 18 year old knows what they want to do?

Besides this, you are gate keeping on money.

Not everyone can afford to spend $250,000 to go to school. Not everyone gets a scholarship to go to school. You are not only hiring the one percent of college students you are mostly the hiring the one percent economically

So yeah, screw where someone goes to school or if they go to school. It is a shit metric.

If you like this thread go support an organization helping make this possible:
https://www.npower.org/
https://www.csforall.org/
https://www.lastmile-ed.org/
https://www.blackgirlscode.com/

Also shout out to @ChloeCondon for inspiring this thread, you the best lady!

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