At Sidebench we have a lot of readers who are occasionally skimming through interesting and engaging articles throughout the workday. Given the volume of articles that we read, we decided to dedicate a separate Slack channel to share our best reads with others. While the content of some articles is best left in the Slack channel, we wanted to highlight some of these articles that made us think, reflect, or start a new conversation.
Every other week we’ll be compiling a list of our favorite articles to share them with a larger audience (that’s you). This week, we have articles that focus on women in tech, net neutrality, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and embracing diversity in the workplace.
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The Dangers of Keeping Women Out of Tech
Women currently hold only one fifth of available technical roles, and although the prevailing view in Silicon Valley is “this is terrible, let’s fix it”, progress isn’t happening quickly enough. Wired discusses what lessons the industry can learn with Maria Klawe, the President of Harvey Mudd College — a small school in Claremont, CA that’s grown women in its computer science program from 10 to 40 percent.
MIT’s Big Brains Will Study Brains to Build Better Brains
This week, MIT announced a new initiative called the MIT Intelligence Quest. This program is designed to propel artificial intelligence forward by progressing our research on neural networks. By bringing together researchers that study both human intelligence and artificial intelligence, MIT hopes these advancements could help silicon brains think more like our pink, squishy brains.
States and Cities Keep the Battle for Net Neutrality Alive
A few weeks ago the Federal Communications Commission gutted the Net Neutrality rules that keep Internet Service Providers from creating internet fast lanes and driving up the price to visit certain websites. In response, Montana Governor Steve Bullock signed and executive order to bar state agencies from doing business with ISPs that violate net neutrality. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a similar order, and California could be next.
What if a Healthier Facebook Is Just … Instagram?
Facebook is renovating its user experience to focus more on its users’ well-being, but The New York Times argues that the company already has a solid blueprint within an app that it already owns. In a dissection of minimal vs. maximal The Times takes a deep dive into what can be done to create a healthier Facebook.
Illustrating Balanced and Inclusive Teams
In this article, Trace Bird, Brand Designer and Illustrator at Atlassian, shares illustrations that help highlight those who may be underrepresented in the tech industry. After a big year at Atlassian, where the company developed a new design language, Bird shares “meeples” that represent that help tell a larger story of diversity and inclusion.
Don’t Make AI Artificially Stupid in the Name of Transparency
Artificial intelligence systems will inevitably crash our cars, and we should expect them to make mistakes. Machine learning mechanisms won’t be perfect, either. However, this doesn’t mean that we should demand AI to be able explain how it came up with its conclusions in every case. Instead, Wiredargues that we should focus on the question of: what is it that we want from a system, and what are we willing to give up to get it?
