Amir H. Payberah - 2024-08-01

I've selected "Angelus Novus" (Angel of History) as the logo for the "Data Feminism" course I'm starting this week at KTH. As Walter Benjamin describes in his essay "On the Concept of History", the painting shows an angel looking back at the past, seeing an ever-growing pile of disasters, much like how historical data, often filled with bias and inequities is used to train AI models today. The angel wants to fix things but is pushed forward by a storm called "progress", just as we want to correct embedded bias in data and AI models, but rapid tech development pushes AI forward before we can fully solve these problems. This storm of progress drives AI into the future, while the biased data of the past continues to accumulate, creating new challenges.

In this course, we will explore these challenges, think critically about them, and discuss ways to address them. All the materials will be available online here.