by Mariya | Apr 5, 2018 | Artificial Intelligence, Culture, Design, Diversity, Enterprise, Leadership
Bigoted AI systems rightly deserve the universal flak they get. But there’s a problem: we might still be screwed even if AI is neutral. Unless artificial intelligence has the “right” biases, AI and people won’t coexist very well. Unless purposely wired to...
by Mariya | Aug 31, 2017 | Culture, Design, Diversity, Leadership
The trope “there’s an app for that” is quickly becoming “there’s an AI for that.” Want to assess the narrative quality of a story? Disney’s got an AI for that. Got a shortage of doctors but still need to treat patients? IBM Watson prescribes the same treatment plan as...
by Mariya | Apr 28, 2017 | Culture, Diversity, Leadership
When Timnit Gebru attended a prestigious AI research conference last year, she counted 6 black people in the audience out of an estimated 8,500. And only one black woman: herself. As a PhD candidate at Stanford University who has published a number of notable papers...
by Mariya | Apr 8, 2017 | Diversity, Leadership
When Sahil Singla joined the social impact startup Farmguide, he was shocked to discover that thousands of rural farmers in India commit suicide every year. When harvests go awry, desperate farmers are forced to borrow from microfinance loan sharks at crippling rates....
by Mariya | Aug 10, 2015 | Design, Leadership
Pair programming is an agile software development technique in which two programmers work together at one workstation. One, the driver, writes code while the other, the navigator, reviews each line. The roles switch frequently as the pair takes turns focusing on the...
by Mariya | Jun 16, 2015 | Culture, Design, Leadership
Maintaining a design-oriented culture and practice is a challenge for all companies, even those started by designer founders who actively fight to preserve a strong design ethos as their companies grow. Executive choices such as design team structure,...
