Holding AI Accountable: Who Gets To Tell the Story?

Join the Pulitzer Center, Northwestern University, and NU’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications for a virtual conversation on AI accountability reporting on Thursday, February 24, at 12:00 pm EST (11:00 am CST).

Governments and corporations worldwide increasingly are harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and predictive technologies to guide life-changing decisions in policing, criminal justice, consumer rights, hiring, and more.

But algorithms also have the potential to disproportionately harm some of the most vulnerable members of society by deepening pre-existing social and economic gaps and amplifying racial bias.

At the Pulitzer Center we believe this is not just a tech story but an accountability and equity one, too, that should be part of every reporter’s beat.

As we kick off a new initiative to support a broader range of journalists reporting on the impacts of technology in their communities, the Pulitzer Center is hosting a virtual event with journalists who are at the forefront of AI reporting.

In conversation with Gina Chua, executive editor at Reuters, the speakers will share how they got started reporting on algorithms, discuss their challenges and breakthroughs, and offer tips for colleagues interested in covering this urgent, underreported story. You can read more about Chua here.

Karen Hao is the senior AI editor at MIT Technology Review, covering cutting-edge research on artificial intelligence and its impacts on society. You can read more about Hao here.

Joanne Cavanaugh Simpson is a freelance journalist, a Johns Hopkins University Lecturer, and a former Miami Herald staff writer, who has done groundbreaking reporting on the use of surveillance and facial recognition technologies in communities of color in Baltimore and Florida. You can read more about her Pulitzer Center-supported work here.

The event is co-sponsored by Northwestern University’s Computational Journalism Lab’s Algorithm Tips Initiative in the School of Communication and the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. Northwestern is a Campus Consortium partner.