Rumman Chowdhury, CEO and Co-Founder, Humane Intelligence
Dr. Rumman Chowdhury’s passion lies at the intersection of artificial intelligence and humanity. She is a pioneer in the field of applied algorithmic ethics, creating cutting-edge socio-technical solutions for ethical, explainable and transparent AI. She is an active contributor to discourse around responsible technology with bylines in The Atlantic, Forbes, Harvard Business Review and VentureBeat. Her current endeavor is the nonprofit Humane Intelligence, which brings hands-on critical tech education to a broad community via red-teaming exercises and bias bounty challenges.
Dr. Rumman Chowdhury is passionate in the nexus between humans and artificial intelligence. In the area of applied algorithmic ethics, she is a trailblazer, developing innovative socio-technical solutions for morally sound, transparent, and explainable AI. With bylines in the Atlantic, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, MIT Technology Review, and VentureBeat, she actively contributes to the conversation on responsible technology.
Currently, Dr. Chowdhury is a Responsible AI Fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society in addition to running Parity Consulting and the Parity Responsible Innovation Fund. She is also a visiting researcher at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering and a research affiliate at the Cambridge University Minderoo Center for Democracy and Technology.
2023
According Rumman Chowdhury, our inability to develop new technologies with ethical care is endangering AI advancements. Chowdhury told Axios’ Ina Fried on Tuesday at Axios’ AI+ Summit in Washington, D.C., “The media and policymakers are obsessed with warnings about long-term existential risks AI might pose, but they are ignoring hard evidence of real harms happening today.”
She said that individuals are already being mistakenly imprisoned by AI systems or denied access to essential organs for transplantation. “These issues are existential for those affected by them as well,” she said, quoting Vice President Kamala Harris’ remarks made earlier this month at the AI summit in the United Kingdom. Chowdhury highlighted the IT industry’s persistent inability to include many viewpoints when developing goods for worldwide use. AI is bringing “a resurgence of bro culture,” which translates to “we’re looking at tech 2017 all over again.”
She pointed out that the conclusion of the most recent OpenAI struggle forced two women out of the boardroom and brought in former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who gained notoriety for downplaying women’s ability for science while serving as Harvard President.
Billy was the first to talk about underpaid data cleaning behind GenAI models (a story others are just now picking up). I love that he’s now focused on people solving the problem. https://t.co/egqSnpKMmq
I support the White House commitments – but I was dismayed to see all of the media focus on for-profit companies as “external” actors when discussing commitments to red teaming. It’s good to have a startup ecosystem, but we can’t assume the market solves this problem.
