The Dark Side of Innovation: How Tech Giants are Perpetuating Discrimination
When it comes to tech, think inputs before impacts. This is the message that Ruha Benjamin, the Alexander Stewart 1886 professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and founding director of its Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, wants to convey. Benjamin argues that the tech set has continued to create products and services that offer convenience and demonstrate the power of imagination, but to do so, they have advanced discrimination by ignoring the history of technical advances coming at the expense of marginalized groups.
Caption: Ruha Benjamin
Benjamin’s work highlights the need for courageous voices, voices that speak truth to power, voices that slow things down so we can see things again. Her four books draw on her extensive research into technology and racism, including what she calls the “New Jim Code,” a nod to both the Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation and the biases encoded into technology.
Caption: A park bench with armrests
Benjamin showed students something decidedly low-tech - a park bench with armrests. She noticed the benches on a trip to the Bay Area, and while she appreciated the convenience, the benches offered the hidden feature of deterring people from sleeping on them - in an area struck by high homelessness amid vast income inequality.
Caption: Single-seat benches
It got worse, as she showed single-seat benches, benches that were caged overnight, and a coin-operated bench with retractable spikes on the seat. Fortunately, that last one was an art project, but Benjamin called it a strong metaphor of something “that’s nominally for everyone, but with forms of harm and exclusion beneath the surface.”
Technology, she said, often plays by the same rules, whether it’s algorithms that make assumptions about a student’s test scores based on their ZIP code, or facial recognition technology - deployed in consumer products and by police - that struggles to correctly identify Black faces.
Caption: Facial recognition technology
Notably, technology isn’t the problem, she said. Rather, the technology is simply reflecting the biases of the people who create and code it. “In every conversation about technology, we have to start not with technology’s impact, but with the social inputs,” Benjamin said. “What’s being used to train, to design; what are the values, the ideas, the preexisting forms of hierarchy that are shaping that design process.”
Caption: David Harkey, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
In a related study, David Harkey, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, found that many new vehicles have gadgets designed to help you stop, steer, and more. They’re supposed to boost safety and take some aspects of driving out of your hands. But a new study shows this technology is, so far, not delivering on its promises.
Caption: Mark Schieldrop of AAA Northeast
Mark Schieldrop of AAA Northeast said it’s a mistake to think these tech gimmicks give you a license for distraction. “Our roads are a mish-mash of many generations of thruways being upgraded and evolved and changed. We have narrow lanes and wide lanes and lanes that appear and disappear. So it’s challenging enough to drive when you’re fully paying attention.”
Caption: XenoBike system
In another development, XenomatiX has introduced a new system, XenoBike, designed for bike lanes and sidewalks. The system allows for up to 140 kilometers to be captured per day, fit with swappable batteries and an ability to adjust measurement width up to four meters wide. And, fittingly, given the goals of promoting easier alternative transportation methods, the XenoBike produces zero emissions, a major advantage over traditional car-based surveying.
Caption: Filip Geuens, CEO of XenomatiX
Filip Geuens, CEO of XenomatiX, spoke about how the XenoBike, and XenomatiX’s overall system, can be used for different types of areas. That includes bike lanes and roads, as mentioned, but also things like specifically inspecting bank angles on highways, which is crucial to know for water evacuation. Additionally, he noted how it’s been used to survey airport runways - both for the quality of the actual runway as well as surveying for debris which could potentially damage aircraft - along with race tracks and as a system to help test new vehicles.
