![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/news\/sites\/16\/2024\/02\/Ruha-new-683x1024.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nUnseen, their importance is still central. Despite being a \u201csmall sliver of humanity,\u201d they design and deploy the technology \u2013 from algorithms to AI to big data \u2013 that \u201cshapes our shared future.\u201d Behind the screen, their values, assumptions, interests and ideologies impact the technology, many times perpetuating pre-existing social inequities, Benjamin said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In her 40-minute lecture before about 400 people in the Higgins Welcome Center and on social media, Benjamin urged the audience to critically evaluate how technological innovations impact society and to help broaden who gets a say in technology’s creation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI really want people who don\u2019t identify as a \u2018techie\u2019 to know that they have a say,\u201d she emphasized at the end of the event. \u201cYou need to have a say as a citizen, as a person living in this world in which these tools are being deployed.\u2026 I\u2019m trying to open up the conversation to include people from different disciplines, life experiences and levels of technical expertise. There are other kinds of expertise and experiences that you have that are vital to us thinking collectively about the way [the future] should be democratically shaped.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Benjamin said it is important to consider the drivers of the technological tools, the context around them, and the racial, labor and environmental impacts when evaluating the benefits of new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As an example, Benjamin cited a 2021 ad that heralded the new design of Amazon\u2019s Alexa, showing a Black woman imagining a \u201cmore flawless vessel\u201d for the virtual assistant\u2013the actor Michael B. Jordan. The ad may seem to disrupt the \u201cprototypical whiteness of technology\u201d or promote inclusive design. But Benjamin juxtaposed the flashy marketing campaign with the fight of Amazon workers to unionize and gain fair working conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf we asked this black woman [in a news photo of a protest] what her idea of inclusive technology is, would it be sexy Black Alexa?\u201d said Benjamin. \u201cOr would it be changes to the algorithms that are shaping her work, intensifying the pace in which she has to box these items such that, as she says here, they\u2019re breaking us?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMoving beyond the buzzwords, looking behind the scene of what\u2019s actually happening is an important starting point for any analysis,\u201d Benjamin said. \u201cAnd so as a provocation, I want to suggest that when it comes to so-called deep learning and AI, computational depth without social and historical depth is, in my view, superficial learning because it narrows our focus on only the technical dimensions of these technologies and the context gets lost, for better or worse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Turning to technology as a quick fix to get at the roots of social inequities, such as race and bias, many times fails to fix the problem, said Benjamin, citing a health-care algorithm, and others, that only perpetuate the implicit bias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/news\/sites\/16\/2024\/02\/ruha-with-ammina-1024x683.jpg\")
\u201cThese quick tech fixes that don\u2019t get to the roots of the social inequities are often hiding or papering over these realities in ways that we should question,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In her book \u201cRace After Technology: Abolition Tools for the New Jim Code,\u201d Benjamin evokes the Jim Crow era in discussing how technology is dealing with these practices. \u201cIn some ways, it\u2019s more dangerous. At least in my grandma\u2019s generation when she would have walked into a hospital and saw a big whites-only sign, [she would go] to the Negro wing,\u201d Benjamin said. \u201cI can walk through the front door, assuming I’m getting equal treatment, but there may very well be a health-care algorithm making decisions about my care, creating the same pattern of resource allocation, and I don’t even know about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In urging the audience to continue to apply context to analyzing and framing the conversation around technology and society, Benjamin used the example of a public bench with spikes to find the harmful effects that may initially lay hidden in the design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor most of us, we don\u2019t build the bench from scratch,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re going to start a new job or an internship and you\u2019re going to start to notice the spikes\u2013this form of harm or exclusion. The question becomes what is your responsibility? Do you just put your head down? Or do you look around and see if anyone else notices the spikes and start to do something about them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Benjamin\u2019s lecture was sponsored by the Harrington School of Communication and Media, Center for Computational Research, College of Arts and Sciences, Office of the Provost, College of Health Sciences, College of Pharmacy, College of Engineering, College of Business, and Department of Political Science.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Feb. 28, 2024 \u2013 There are two popular storylines that envision technology\u2019s unfettered growth and its effects on society. There\u2019s the Hollywood version, the \u201ctechno-dystopian\u201d narrative popular in movies like \u201cThe Terminator,\u201d where technology destroys or enslaves humans, said Princeton University scholar Ruha Benjamin during a recent lecture at the University of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":92794,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92792"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92844,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92792\/revisions\/92844"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}