Perry World House, 3803 Locust Walk

A panel discussion with CHAZ ARNETT (University of Maryland) and CHARLTON MCILWAIN (NYU), moderated by ANITA ALLEN (Penn Law).

TECHNO-UTOPIANS HAVE LONG ARGUED THAT GOVERNANCE by machine would be free of the prejudices that blinker human decision-making. But since it is humans who create and program the machines, there is also the risk that discriminatory biases will get hard wired, and endlessly reproduced, in the technological systems that increasingly mediate our social lives. Our panelists track this process in real time as it has unfolded in the realms of law enforcement and media, demonstrating that the racism embedded in social institutions and that encoded into algorithms reinforce each other and must be addressed simultaneously.