Rumman Chowdhury
Rumman Chowdhury at the AI for Good Global Summit 2018
Born1980 (age 43–44)
Rockland County, New York
Alma materMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Columbia University
University of California, San Diego (PhD)
AwardsBBC 100 Women (2017)

TIME 100/AI (2023)

One of Five Who are Shaping AI (Forbes) (2018)

Bay Area's top 40 under 40 (San Francisco Business Times) (2018)

Inducted to the British Royal Society of the Arts (RSA)
Scientific career
FieldsEthical Artificial Intelligence
InstitutionsAccenture
ThesisBeating Plowshares into Swords: The Impact of the Metropolitan-Military Complex (2017)
Doctoral advisorThaddeus Kousser
Steven Erie[1]
Websiterummanchowdhury.com

Rumman Chowdhury (b. 1980) is a Bangladeshi American data scientist, a business founder, and former responsible artificial intelligence lead at Accenture. She was born in Rockland County, New York.[2] She is recognized for her contributions to the field of data science.

Chowdhury's journey into the world of science was inspired by her love for science fiction, a passion that ignited her curiosity, often attributed to the "Dana Scully Effect." This fascination with the intersection of science and fiction laid the foundation for her future endeavors.[3]

Education

Chowdhury completed her undergraduate study in Management Science and Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[2] She received a Master of Science from Columbia University in Statistics and Quantitative methods.[3] She holds a Doctorate Degree in Political Science from University of California, San Diego.[2][1] She finished her PhD whilst working in Silicon Valley.[4] Her main interest for her career and higher educational studies was how data can be used to understand people's bias and ways to evaluate the impact of technology on humanity.[2]

Career

Early

Chowdhury taught data science at the boot camp Metis and worked at Quotient before joining Accenture in 2017.[2] She led their work on responsible artificial intelligence.[2] She was concerned about algorithmic bias and the AI workforce; particularly on retaining researchers.[2] She has spoken openly about the need to define what ethical AI actually means[5] and was responsible for coining the term "moral outsourcing". She works with companies on developing ethical governance and algorithms that explain their decisions transparently.[6] She is determined to use AI to improve diversity in recruitment.[7]

Chowdhury, alongside a team of early career researchers at the Alan Turing Institute, developed a Fairness Tool which scrutinises the data that is input to an algorithm and identifies whether certain categories (such as race or gender) may influence the outcome.[8] The tool both identifies and tries to fix bias, enabling organisations to make fairer decisions.[9]

All.ai, Parity and X Institute

Chowdhury designed All.ai, a language analysis tool that can monitor and improve the gender balance of speakers in meetings.[10]

In 2020, she founded Parity to bridge the translation gap between risk, legal, and data teams.[11]

She launched the X Institute, a program which teaches refugees about data science and marketing.[2]

She has given a keynote speech at Slush, talking about augmenting human capabilities.[12] She delivered a TED talk about humanity in the age of artificial intelligence.[12]

Twitter

From February 2021 to November 2022 Chowdhury was a director for the Machine Learning Ethics, Transparency and Accountability (META) team with Twitter.[13][14] META's goal was to study and improve the machine learning systems used within Twitter, this included biased algorithms that may cause harm to the user.[15] Biased algorithms have been an issue for a long time in the tech industry; traits such as gender, sex, race, or social class hold potential segregation that may result in unfair decisions. META strived to avoid this by making Twitter better, fair, accountable, and more transparent for its users.[15] Most projects that META teams worked on involved research and data analysis, and the team was largely made up of professors, researchers, and engineers.[16] In 2021, Chowdry and the META team published an analysis titled Examining algorithmic amplification of political content on Twitter.[17] In November 2022, Chowdry was one of many Twitter employees that were laid off at short notice after Elon Musk's takeover of the company.[13]

Awards

In 2017, she was included in the 100 Women (BBC) in the "Glass Ceiling Team" category.[18] In 2018, she was named one of five people who are shaping AI by Forbes.[19] She was acknowledged by The Business Journals as one of the Bay Area's top 40 Under 40.[20] She has also been inducted into the British Royal Society of the Arts (RSA) to celebrate people who have made progress in social challenges.[21]

References

  1. ^ a b Chowdhury, Rumman (2017). Beating Plowshares into Swords: The Impact of the Metropolitan-Military Complex. escholarship.org (PhD thesis). University of California, San Diego. OCLC 992172239.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Apte, Poornima. "The Data Scientist Putting Ethics Into AI". OZY. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
  3. ^ a b "Rumman Chowdhury is California's Coolest Data Scientist". MM.LaFleur. 13 January 2017. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
  4. ^ "Meet the San Francisco Business Times' 40 under 40 Class of 2018 - Rumman Chowdhury". San Francisco Business Times. 2018. Retrieved 23 November 2018.
  5. ^ Yao, Mariya (12 June 2018), "Building Ethical & Responsible AI Technologies (Interview with Rumman Chowdhury of Accenture)", Top Bots, retrieved 21 November 2018
  6. ^ Building Ethical & Responsible AI Technologies (AI For Growth, Rumman Chowdhury, Accenture), TOPBOTS: Applied AI For Business, 12 June 2018, retrieved 20 November 2018 – via YouTube
  7. ^ Welsh, John. "9 Developments In AI That You Really Need to Know". Forbes. Retrieved 21 November 2018.
  8. ^ "CogX—Tackling The Challenge Of Ethics In AI | Accenture". www.accenture.com. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
  9. ^ "5 Q's for Rumman Chowdhury, Global Lead for Responsible AI at Accenture". Center for Data Innovation. 17 August 2018. Retrieved 21 November 2018.
  10. ^ Hinchliffe, Emma. "This app will help you speak up—or shut up—during meetings". Mashable. Retrieved 21 November 2018.
  11. ^ "About Us". Parity. Archived from the original on 20 January 2021.
  12. ^ a b Slush (7 December 2017), Rumman Chowdhury: Augmenting Human Capabilities to New Dimensions, retrieved 21 November 2018
  13. ^ a b Carbonaro, Giulia (4 November 2022). "Twitter worker who pointed out right-wing bias on platform fired by Musk". Newsweek.
  14. ^ "Big news! - I'm thrilled to be joining the @TwitterEng team today as Director of ML Ethics, Transparency & Accountability. With the META team, we'll work to improve ML transparency, inclusivity and accountability. 1/". Twitter. Retrieved 17 November 2021.
  15. ^ a b "Introducing our Responsible Machine Learning Initiative". blog.twitter.com. Retrieved 17 November 2021.
  16. ^ ""A 'building the plane as you fly it' moment": Q&A with Twitter's ethical AI lead Rumman Chowdhury". Morning Brew. Retrieved 17 November 2021.
  17. ^ Belli, Luca (21 October 2021). "Examining algorithmic amplification of political content on Twitter". blog.twitter.com. Retrieved 17 November 2021.
  18. ^ "BBC 100 Women 2017: Who is on the list?". 27 September 2017. Retrieved 10 January 2024.
  19. ^ Team, Insights. "Forbes Insights: 5 People Building Our AI Future". Forbes. Retrieved 17 November 2021.
  20. ^ "40 Under 40 2018: Rumman Chowdhury, Accenture (Video)". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 17 November 2021.
  21. ^ Tech & Startup Desk (8 September 2023). "Bangladeshi-origin Rumman Chowdhury in TIME's Top 100 in AI". The Daily Star. Retrieved 9 September 2023.
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