Having uncomfortable conversations

Issues of bias, discrimination, and power asymmetries between the silicon valley and the next billion have become more prominent on the technology agenda. While some argue biased technologies are oversights by those who design them, accidental mistakes which can be mitigated by increasing awareness, auditing for bias and diversifying the technology workforce. Whilst such efforts are important, they will not solve the systematic oppression of black, brown and marginalized communities. Racial discrimination is entrenched in society, enduring as a feature of the social fabric invisible to the tech community where at times we ‘can’t put our finger on it’. In this session we propose for uncomfortable conversations to disrupt the uncomfortable silences of the discriminatory effects of tech. We propose an open discussion between the tech and the anti-discrimination communities as a primary strategy to building collaborative resistance against the intrinsic data harm potentially hardwired into the tech