Google This: Algorithmic Oppression

At Liberty

Imagine you’ve forgotten once again the difference between a gorilla and a chimpanzee, so you do a quick Google image search of “gorilla.” But instead of finding images of adorable banana-obsessed animals, photos of a Black couple pop up. Is this just a glitch in the algorithm? Or, is Google an ad company, not an information company, that’s replicating the discrimination of the world it operates in? How can this discrimination be addressed and who is accountable for it? Our guest today, UCLA professor and best-selling author of “Algorithms of Oppression,” Dr. Safiya Noble answers these questions.