In a world polarised between tech doomers and optimists, Rumman Chowdhury is neither. One of the world’s most influential AI ethicists and policy experts, she’s on a mission to hold a human mirror up to technology. And demand accountability from its creators.
Forbes recently named her one of Five who are Shaping AI in the world. And in September, TIME magazine listed her in their 100 most influential AI figures as well.
Chowdhury told the publication that when she asked ChatGPT4 who she was, it called her “an influencer with a lot of shoes.” Not only was the bot’s response incorrect, it reeked of gender bias. That’s just part of the spectrum she is seeking to fix.
Technology is not a neutral phenomenon: algorithms reflect the bias of their coders. Chowdhury questions why Silicon Valley’s AI models often skew so white, so male, and so privileged.
A pioneer in the field of applied algorithmic ethics, creating cutting-edge socio-technical solutions for ethical, explainable, and transparent AI, Chowdhury used to head the machine learning ethics team at Twitter, now X. In 2020, she highlighted a white skin bias in the platform’s image cropping algorithm. She also concluded that Twitter's algorithm boosted right-wing news sources over its competition. The findings troubled Chowdhury who, as part of the ethics team, had taken on the task of undoing Twitter’s unfair algorithm. As she asks, “Who gets to be the arbiter of truth? Who gets to decide what can and cannot be seen?”
This question sits at the heart of the power machine: the persuasive technologies, social media giants, and internet economy that dominate our lives.
Once Elon Musk took over as owner at X though, the committee was disbanded. Chowdhury resigned, joining others in a mass exodus from the company.
Chowdhury has a degree in political science and data science, and was formerly Global Lead for Responsible A.I. at Accenture. There, she worked with Fortune 500 leaders and led the design of a Fairness Tool – a first-in-industry algorithmic tool to mitigate bias in AI systems. Chowdhury is now founder and CEO of Parity Consulting, an algorithmic auditing startup, and serves on several boards including AI4All, a group dedicated to drawing underrepresented groups into science, tech, engineering, and maths – or STEM, as we know it.
She often stresses how alarmist headlines about AI deflect accountability from the engineer to the algorithm. AI is not racist or dangerous: humans are. So, the core of her work is to demand answers from those implementing these models.
Why does a resume-screening system prefer CVs with male names? On what basis do credit card services privilege male candidates over women with better credit scores? Why do visual screening entrances refuse access for people of colour?
As AI systems evolve in sophistication and concerns grow about misuse by bad actors, Chowdhary’s work has become ever more urgent. She has been helping shape policy across the world – as advisor to the UK House of Lords, and through testimonies to the New York City Algorithmic Commission, the UN, OECD, and others.
Chowdhury has also co-founded Humane Intelligence, the largest public A.I. ‘red-teaming’ competition. Supported by the White House, it’s a gathering of ethical hackers, invited to find vulnerabilities in gigantic AI models before they go public.
We increasingly live in a world where our inner and exterior realities are profoundly shaped by invisible codes outside our control. At SYNAPSE, Chowdhury will help make those forces visible and share how citizens and countries can step up to identify and shape them. Or, at the very least, be aware of them.
*Due to unforeseen circumstances, Rumman Chowhdhury could not participate in SYNAPSE 2024.
