During the Spring semester of 2021, I embarked on a new journey of research with Dr. Lindsay Weinberg of the Purdue Honors College. I began researching Power Structures in Digital Technologies. This means I was looking closely at the social, political, economic, etc., structures that exist in our innovation based society and how they affect how we use, implement, and teach digital technologies. My focus was in Gender Bias in AI where I looked at both the workplace and work products that contain innate biases that affect the AI industry. While doing this research, I dove a bit into engineering education as an area that was a basis of bias and unconvered a current disconnect between assessment based engineering outcomes and the political and social discourse needed to understand and maintain an ethical practice as an engineer. I hope to bring awareness to this fault in accreditation and to how we can do better as engineers as our work impacts a large percentage of the world. Ethics and diversity are my passion areas within tech as I feel all groups deserve their place at the table, but they have not been given the proper resources or education to get to that point.
Why does this matter?
Technology and innovation culture is here to stay. More specifically, the workplace will continue to implement more and more technology as we go, finding more feasbile mechanisms to bring in tech for convenience and to reach new levels. Emerging technologies will also continue to push boundaries as they are setting the precedent for the future tech. Power Structures in Digital Technologies are important to understand as we push progress in tech because these structures drive the creation and future of the technologies. The innate bias they create lives eternally in the technology. If we go too far as an innovation society without considering the ethics of the tech we create, it may be too late to reverse any bias that ultimately disadvantages one group or another. Gender Bias in AI is both an HR and Development issue- two sides of the same coin- and is particularly an issue as AI implementation and culture is part of a large growth and the moment and will continue to grow to new heights we cannot even predict yet. During this growth it is so important for engineers, analysts, business decision makers, and the entirety of entities to consider the ethics of their creations- especially those like AI with such great potential and global effects we cannot predict yet.
In addition, I hope to drive critical discourse that challenges the dominant acceptance of ABET and accreditations as the leader in determining success in an engineering program. I will create arguments around assessment based and knowledge learned curriculums, and urge programs to stray away from the “inventory approach” to teaching and learning and administrative conservatism. Students should be empowered to ask what is missing from their education, rather than focusing on predetermined outcomes and how they fit those boxes. I then will give my recommendations on how to build better structure for learning outcomes and achievements measured by institutions and how to best utilize ABET without using it as a justification for a lack of ethical empathy. My primary methodology will be critical discourse analysis of ABET guidelines and the use of Purdue engineering as a case study, as well as studying how other concepts like product management, gender and racial bias, disability, and industry codes of ethics intersect with existing, dominant approaches and applications to engineering education.
What’s next?
Well, I started my research during the Spring semester of 2021 and used the Summer of 2021 to continue my research, specifically looking into and speaking with the up and coming industry leaders that use or plan to use AI. I explored many questions regarding the gender gap in tech leadership, team building in AI, ethics considerations, and so many more. During Fall 2021, I spent most of my time talking with academics and doing a literature review in prep for a critical discourse analysis of ABET and surrounding themes. During Spring 2021, I will be putting together my findings for a paper I will publish and will be featured on a Purdue podcast to bring more awareness to the ethics discussion. I hope to attend the ASEE conference and the Grace Hopper Celebration to network with academics and industry professionals who align with my passion in this area of the field and present my research as well. This is a very exciting time for both me and the industry, and my goal is to take this research to not only express my passion but create a learning moment for the future of STEM.