INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Epstein is the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard and MIT, and the author of the New York Times bestselling book Good Without God
More posts by this contributorIn June, TechCrunch Ethicist in Residence Greg M
Epstein attended EmTech Next, a conference organized by the MIT Technology Review
it means to work in technology ethically, within a capitalist system and market economy.Accompanying the story for Extra Crunch are a series
of in-depth interviews Greg conducted around the conference, with scholars, journalists, founders and attendees.Below he speaks to two
conference attendees who had crucial insights to share
Meili Gupta is a high school senior at Phillips Exeter Academy, an elite boarding school in New Hampshire; Gupta attended the EmTech Next
conference with her mother and has attended with family in previous years as well; her voice and thoughts on privilege and inequality in
Walter Erike is a 31-year-old independent consultant and SAP Implementation Senior Manager
Between conference session, he and Greg talked about diversity and inclusion at tech conferences and beyond.Meili Gupta is a senior at
Image via Meili GuptaGreg Epstein: How did you come to be at EmTech Next?MeiliGupta: I am a rising high school senior at Phillips Exeter
My parents have come to these conferences before, and that gave me an opportunity to come
about STEM at your high school
What subjects that Matter covers are most interesting to you?This year we published two issues
The first featured a lot of interviews from top {AI} professors like Professor Fei-Fei Li, at Stanford
We did a review for her and an interview with Professor Olga Russakovsky at Princeton
That was an AI special issue and, being at this conference you hear about how AI will transform industries.The second issue coincided with
Phillips Exeter Global Climate Action Day
We focused both on environmentalism clubs at Exeter and environmentalism efforts worldwide
this new field people are calling the ethics of technology
When you hear that term, what comes to mind?As a consumer of a lot of technology and as someone of the generation who has grown up with a
concerns about AI? What do you think needs to be addressed in order for us to feel more comfortable as a society with increased use of
your high school is doing some interesting work in terms of incorporating both STEM and a deeper, more creative than usual focus on ethics
and exploring the meaning of life
in my next question.Absolutely
With the computer science curriculum, starting in my ninth grade they offered a computer science 590 about [introduction to] artificial
In the fall another 590 course was about self driving cars, and you saw the intersection between us working in our robotics lab and learning
about computer vision algorithms
This past semester, a couple students, and I was involved, helped to set up a 999: an independent course which really dove deep into machine
preparing some people for that world better than others
and have nots?I completely agree that the issue between haves and have nots needs to be talked about more, because inequality between the
upper and the lower classes is growing every year
Isbell from Georgia Tech talk was really inspiring
For example, at Phillips Exeter, we have a social service club called ESA which houses more than 70 different social service clubs
opportunities to learn and get ahead with those skills.What Mr
Isbell was talking about this morning was at a university level and also tying in corporations bridge that divide
to pull back technology, which has been shown to have the power to save lives
It can be two transformations that are happening at the same time
levels and the second is allowing for a transformation in technology and AI.What are you hoping to get out of this conference for yourself,
I was hoping to learn some insight about what I may want to study in college
After that, what type of jobs do I want to pursue that are going to exist and be in demand and really interesting, that have an impact on
with a Professor at the University of Maryland about eliminating bias in machine learning algorithms
What type of dataset do I want to apply that project to? Where is the need or the attention for correcting bias in the AI algorithms?As a
your biggest critique of the conference? What could be improved?
