When Science Goes Sideways

On April 13, 1992, while America was watching Wayne’s World and jamming to Nirvana, thousands of Chicagoans were forced to evacuate their offices due to a most unusual flood. While the streets stayed dry, an ominous whirlpool was spiraling in the river below. This strange event has it all: drama, history, and some good old fashioned government negligence. Learn how engineering and nature don’t always play nice and what this means for a world where flooding is the new normal.

What can a history of biased science–such as racism operating to distort the “objective truths” science long sought to uncover–and the ethical implications of rapidly advancing AI technologies say about the future of science, technology, our schools, and society? I’ll deconstruct the lifecycle of bias when building an AI model and argue bias as an inescapable element of scientific knowledge production. We’ll put this in conversation with the paradigm shift AI heralds for science and empiricism in particular, while exploring the broader impacts AI threatens and promises.