There’s an excellent story in the anthology Futuristica Volume 1 about a police bot that’s been trained on historical data and shoots an innocent young black man.
Originally shared by Gina Drayer
Surprise! An AI feed a past bias (intentional or otherwise) turns out to be biased.
“Because AI systems learn to make decisions by looking at historical data they often perpetuate existing biases. In this case, that bias was the male-dominated working environment of the tech world. According to Reuters, Amazon’s program penalized applicants who attended all-women’s colleges, as well as any resumes that contained the word “women’s” (as might appear in the phrase “women’s chess club”).”
Dr. Vivien Theodore Thomas was born in Lake Providence, Louisiana in 1910. The grandson of a slave, Vivien Thomas attended Pearl High School in Nashville, and graduated with honors in 1929. In the wake of the stock market crash in October, he secured a job as a laboratory assistant in 1930 with Dr. Alfred Blalock at Vanderbilt University.
Tutored in anatomy and physiology by Blalock and his young research fellow, Dr. Joseph Beard, Thomas rapidly mastered complex surgical techniques and research methodology. In an era when institutional racism was the norm, Thomas was classified, and paid, as a janitor, despite the fact that by the mid-1930s he was doing the work of a postdoctoral researcher in Blalock’s lab. Together he and Blalock did groundbreaking research into the causes of hemorrhagic and traumatic shock. This work later evolved into research on Crush syndrome and saved the lives of thousands of soldiers on the battlefields of World War II.
Blalock and Thomas began experimental work in vascular and cardiac surgery, defying medical taboos against operating upon the heart. It was this work that laid the foundation for the revolutionary lifesaving surgery they were to perform at Johns Hopkins a decade later. By 1940, the work Blalock had done with Thomas placed him at the forefront of American surgery, and when he was offered the position of Chief of Surgery at his alma mater, Johns Hopkins in 1941, he requested that Thomas accompany him. In 1943, while pursuing his shock research, Blalock was approached by renowned pediatric cardiologist Dr. Helen Taussig, who was seeking a surgical solution to a complex and fatal four-part heart anomaly called Tetralogy of Fallot (also known as blue baby syndrome, although other cardiac anomalies produce blueness, or cyanosis). Thomas was charged with the task of first creating a blue baby-like condition (cyanosis) in a dog, then correcting the condition by means of the pulmonary-to-subclavian anastomosis. In nearly two years of laboratory work involving some 200 dogs, demonstrated that the corrective procedure was not lethal, thus persuading Blalock that the operation could be safely attempted on a human patient. During this first procedure in 1944, Thomas stood on a step-stool behind Blalock coaching him through the procedure. When the procedure was published in the May 1945 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Blalock and Taussig received sole credit for the Blalock-Taussig shunt. Thomas received no mention and, in Blalock’s writings, he was never credited for his role.
Smart thinking, well expressed (quelle surprise) from Ann Leckie on the idea that “I don’t like this thing, so people who claim they like it must have an agenda”.
I don’t think I would like N.K. Jemison’s Hugo-winning novels, but it’s because they sound dark and harrowing, and I don’t enjoy that. That’s why I haven’t read them.
I’m perfectly willing to believe that other people like them. Having read one of her other books, and some of her blog posts, I’m also very willing to believe that they are good.
Sometimes things win awards that I think are mediocre in terms of craft (again, I don’t expect that Jemison’s books are among those), but I’m still willing to believe that people liked them. Those people were looking for something in a book that is different from what I look for.
One of the reasons I started indie publishing is that I wanted to control my covers.
This piece gives an insight from an editor into the trad-pub process as regards covers, and how things changed over time for one writer’s books.
Originally shared by Kam-Yung Soh
A look at the covers for Octavia Butler’s books. “From an editor’s point of view, it’s vital to obtain a great piece of cover art for every book you publish. An outstanding book cover can make a first-time writer. It can separate an author from the pack on crowded bookshelves. It telegraphs the right message to the perfect readership.
Given all that, why do some book covers go so wildly astray? More than thirty years in New York publishing have given me some answers.
[…]
The original 1987 cover from Warner Books [for Dawn] shows a white woman awaking from what appears to be a medical procedure of some kind. However, early in chapter 1 of Dawn we read this very clear description of Lilith, the main character, from her own point of view: “Once, they put a child in with her—a small boy with long, straight black hair and smoky-brown skin, paler than her own.”
Now, was this a case of artistic error, or was it an example of a publisher deciding that a black woman on a book cover would turn off too many potential purchasers? If it was the latter, it’s far from the only case of cover art designed to avoid the depiction of characters of color. Octavia’s editor and art director from that time are no longer alive, so we can’t be sure of the thought processes involved. But we can take a look at Butler’s other covers from early in her career to see how they were handled.”
“Because the same society that taught some people they were heroes, saviors … taught me I existed only in the background of their stories… waiting for them to rescue me. And for a long time, I believed them.”
“Because the same society that taught some people they were heroes, saviors … taught me I existed only in the background of their stories… waiting for them to rescue me. And for a long time, I believed them.”
Two scientists have launched a campaign to get a copy of a book that debunks accepted scientific “facts” about women into every state school in the UK.
These women are tough, dedicated, skilled, and “not corruptible”.
Originally shared by Kam-Yung Soh
Woah. Don’t mess with these rangers. “Mander said Akashinga is a departure from the male-centric military and special-ops world in which he has long operated — what he calls “one of the ultimate boys’ clubs” — and his newer realm of conservation rangers, where the male-to-female ratio is 100 to 1.
To build his Akashinga team Mander, who had not previously trained women, sought applicants from among the most vulnerable females in rural areas. He recruited abuse survivors, abandoned wives, orphans, sex workers and single mothers — women who, he said, “weren’t victims of circumstance; they were victims of men.” Also joining the team this past December was Vimbai Kumire, the youngest daughter of Zimbabwe’s president Emmerson Mnangagwa, reportedly as a show of her support for the women and their role in rebuilding the country.
[…]
The Akashinga recruits initially “went through 72 hours of hell,” said Mander, but only three of 37 women who entered the program dropped off after those first three days. They continued through the same paces as male rangers who train for anti-poaching work and completed an extensive program that covers camouflage and concealment, conservation ethics, crime scene preservation and crisis management. In Akashinga, they also learn how to deal with dangerous wildlife, democratic policing, firearm safety and proper use, first aid, human rights, information gathering techniques, leadership, patrolling, search and arrest, and unarmed combat.
The discipline the women displayed every day of training, and since, is also seen in their diet. All are vegans — a commitment they made to themselves and to the terms of Akashinga.
[…]
What matters, Mander said, are results, and so far their efforts are paying off. As of this writing, the Akashinga team has about 60 arrests, which have resulted in more than 41 years of jail sentences. Recent actions resulted in arrests for serious crimes related to ivory smuggling, zebra poaching and sable antelope snaring.
Mander said Akashinga has been “more effective than anything I’ve seen.” He noted too that the women have an uncanny ability to “de-escalate everything.””
Engineering UK said just 12% of all engineers in Britain are female, despite girls generally performing better than boys in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM).
The trade body said this is due to girls dropping out of the education pipeline, with issues around identity and the perception of the ability to achieve goals for young women in engineering.
Only 3% of apprentices starting up in engineering apprenticeships in Scotland are female, compared to 11% in Northern Ireland, 9% in Wales and 8% in England.
This writer did a lot of work researching an experience that she wasn’t part of in order to get it right. Kudos.
Originally shared by Conscious Style Guide
“Was I reinforcing stereotypes, or combatting them? And was I stealing attention from first-hand narratives, or shedding light on them? The first question was a matter of good writing—something I had control over. The second was stickier.”
#fiction #writers #writingtip #writingadvice
[Image: A red “Wrong Way” sign in front of distant mountains.]
