On the Books

Safiya Umoja Noble's 2018 study Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism shattered the naïve assumption that search engines were somehow neutral in their sifting, aggregating, and presenting of information. Search engines do not merely mislead, Noble argued, they actively replicate and perpetuate racial and gender hierarchies. Coining the term technological redlining, Noble exposed the ways “discrimination is [...] embedded in computer code and, increasingly, in artificial intelligent technologies” on which we rely (p. 1). Inspired by Noble's work, the project team at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Unc) Libraries has launched On the Books, a “‘Collections as Data’ and machine learning project” that asks: “If algorithms can reinforce racism, could we also use algorithms to fight racism?” The wording of this question is important. It acknowledges that people, and not disembodied arbiters, create the equations that ultimately spit out automated responses to

Algorithm · Chapel · Oppression · Political science · Politics · Racism · Resistance (ecology · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Gender Studies · Law