Conference Video: Actionable Ethics for Data Scientists Workshop
This is the video of Emily Miller’s workshop from WIDS Puget Sound 2020 Conference. Enjoy!
ABSTRACT:
It’s time to make data ethics more practical and actionable. In this interactive workshop, Emily will demonstrate how to use deon, a command line tool that allows you to easily add an ethics checklist to your data science projects. The goal of deon is to enable teams to integrate structured discussions of data ethics, and provide concrete reminders to the developers that have influence over how data science gets done. Emily will explain the rationale behind building an ethics checklist and walk through the content, illustrating with concrete examples the times where overlooking an item on the ethics checklist has caused harm. In stories of improperly hashed NYC taxi data, congressional distortions of Planned Parenthood data, and racial disparities in Amazon Prime delivery areas, she’ll cover a diverse set of issues that can come up in the course of data science work.
However, this isn’t just a story about what goes wrong. In the second half, participants will roll up their sleeves and dive in to the trade-offs and nuance as they navigate a set of data ethics scenarios. In a two-phased case study on public and private sector uses of personal health data, participants will practice working through the checklist and examining the ethical implications of their choices.
Come learn how to jumpstart the ethics conversation all data teams should be having.
Emily Miller is a Data Scientist at DrivenData, where she helps mission-driven organizations leverage the power of data science and machine learning to maximize their impact. She is passionate about using data for social good and has previously worked at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Stanford Center for International Development, and Brookings Institution. She holds a master’s in International Development from The New School and a data science certificate from Metis.