Carrie Heitman and Heather Richards-Rissetto will team up to give the talk “Discriminatory Algorithms and Cultural Complexities” on Feb. 25 at 5:30 p.m. in the City Union Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public.
The lecture continues the theme “The Rise of the Machines” for the CAS Inquire program, serving as a starting point for discussion that students in the program have with peers, staff, and faculty.
Heitman is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and associate director of the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities. Richards-Rissetto is an assistant professor in the department and a faculty fellow in the center. Both use algorithms in their research as part of their digital humanities projects: Heitman studies the Salmon Pueblo Ruins [link https://news.unl.edu/newsrooms/today/article/neh-funded-project-brings-salmon-pueblo-ruins-into-digital-age/], and Richards-Rissetto reconstructs ancient Mayan culture [link https://news.unl.edu/newsrooms/today/article/anthropological-project-refines-3-d-modeling/].
From social media feeds to facial recognition software, “there has been a growing awareness of the implicit and explicit biases embedded in the technologies we use,” the speakers wrote in their abstract.
The talk will explain what algorithms are, how they can be used by researchers, and the risks involved in using them.
The series opened in September of 2019 and has covered British literature, drones, genetics, and nanotechnology.
Visit the CAS Inquire program [link https://cas.unl.edu/cas-inquire] web page for more information, including links to videos of previous talks.
More details at: https://cas.unl.edu/cas-inquire