Renée Cummings: From journalist and PR practitioner to AI JEDI

Renée Cummings is a leading data ethicist, criminologist, and criminal justice consultant. She serves as the first Data Ethicist in Residence at the University of Virginia. She’s been called an AI Jedi. She explains the journey that brought her to data ethics and why you need to be better informed about this emerging area. She was recently featured on All Tech is Human where she also provided insight on AI & Human Rights.

By Renée Cummings

I began my career many moons ago as a journalist, and I worked as a print journalist for several years. Then I went into television journalism. And while working in television journalism, I became a sportscaster. It's a secret that few people know, but now it's a secret that's out in the open – a sportscaster.

Then I moved into public relations, government relations, litigation PR, crisis communications and risk management. I worked with organizations to protect their brand and to give them the contingency plans that were required to ensure that their brands stayed relevant and stayed stable. If there was a need for rehabilitation of a brand, if there was some sort of litigation or some type of crisis, I was there to steer the organization in the right direction.

Transparency and trust

All of that has come together for me now in the field of AI ethics, because when we think of AI ethics, we think of rights, and we also think of risks. Many organizations are committed to a risk-based approach that looks at ways in which we can flag crises or look at the ways in which we need to mitigate risks. So I spent a lot of time speaking about AI risks and speaking about ways in which we need to communicate ethically about artificial intelligence and new and emerging technologies.

I also tried to spend a lot of time helping organizations develop a culture that is ethical and open to doing AI the way it needs to be done. It would be very committed to issues such as accountability, transparency and explainability. It would question whether we can have trustworthy AI if we don't understand, in its deepest context, the ways in which the Blackbox works. If there's not a full explanation, how could we have trustworthy technology? So, there are lots of questions that I'm trying to solve.

Answers will be found in diversity

AI ethics and data activism are all about interdisciplinary, cross-collaborative, cross-sector work. My background is very diverse, and a lot of people call me the AI Jedi because so much of my work is situated within justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, the first letter of each word creating the Jedi acronym. I spend a lot of time speaking about algorithmic justice and ways in which we need to make algorithms fair; the ways in which we need to understand bias and discrimination; the ways in which our data needs to be reimagined and redefined; and the ways in which we need to understand the long-term implications of data and society, and technology and society.

There’s this belief that a technical solution is the only solution, and of course, it’s not. We are realizing that we need to have these diverse perspectives and technologies, and we need individuals coming from that cross-collaborative, multidisciplinary, multicultural background who bring unique perspectives to the ways in which we do technology, AI ethics or data ethics.

I always say to people, invite yourself to the party. That means you have something to contribute. One of the biggest conversations now in AI is how do we get communities involved in this conversation. Wherever you are, you represent several communities, because you are not just a monolith. We are all so many parts, so many moving parts, so many exciting parts, and you represent several communities that we need to have in this conversation.

Every voice is important

So it is important to have that interdisciplinary background. It's important to understand that you have a say and you have a powerful voice that needs to be heard. Because not only are you a consumer of technology, but you are also a producer of knowledge; you produce data. It's your data that's being monetized, and it’s your data that could eventually be weaponized against you by the police, by the protective services, by national security and defense forces, or just by a company, an organization, or a job. It's very important to understand the power and the privilege and politics inherent in data and how we are using data to build new and emerging technologies such as AI.

That is why we need all of you involved in the conversation and beyond the conversation. We need you on the front line where the action is happening, where the technologies are being designed and developed and deployed, and where the debates are happening on how to do this ethically. For me, the big thing about AI is not what we know but what we do not know, and how soon are we going to find out what we do not know and are we going to be in a position then to really push back or pull back or right the wrong. So it's important for all of us to be in this conversation.