The 2019 Charlottesville Women in Data Science Conference will feature morning and afternoon keynote presentations by two incredible women working in data science.
The morning keynote will feature Meredith Broussard, Data Journalist and Author of Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World, and the afternoon keynote will feature Rama Akkiraju, IBM Distinguished Engineer and Master Inventor.
Morning Keynote
Rama Akkiraju
Distinguished Engineer and Master Inventor, IBM Watson
Rama Akkiraju is a Distinguished Engineer, Master Inventor and IBM Academy Member, and a Director at IBM’s Watson Division where she leads the AI operations teams and also heads the AI mission of enabling natural, personalized and compassionate conversations between computers and humans.
In her career, Rama has worked on agent-based decision support systems, electronic market places, business process optimization, and semantic Web services, for which she led a World-Wide-Web (W3C) standard.
Rama has been named by Forbes as one of the ‘Top 20 Women in AI Research’ in May 2017 and has been featured in ‘A-Team in AI’ by Fortune magazine in July 2018. Rama has co-authored 4 book chapters, and over 50 technical papers. Rama has 18 issued patents and 20+ pending. She is the recipient of three best paper awards in AI and Operations Research and received multiple technical accomplishment awards at IBM including Corporate Awards which are awarded for highest technical achievements.
Afternoon Keynote
Meredith Broussard
Data Journalist and Author
"Artificial Unintelligence"
Our collective enthusiasm for applying computer technology to every aspect of life has resulted in a vast number of poorly designed systems. We are so eager to do everything digitally—hiring, driving, paying bills, even choosing romantic partners—that we have stopped demanding that our technology actually work.
In this talk, author and NYU professor Meredith Broussard looks at the inner workings and outer limits of technology, and explains why we should never assume that computers always get things right. Making a case against “technochauvinism”—the belief that technology is always the solution—Broussard looks at why social problems persist in every digital Utopia. If we understand the limits of what we *can* do with technology, Broussard tells us, we can make better choices about what we *should* do with it to make the world better for everyone.
