DataEthics4All

The Problem: Technology is incubated and developed in a homogeneous environment. The people who are building today’s technology do not share the same lived experiences of many of its users. Not only does it widen the existing disparities in society; it amplifies it. Minorities and communities of color do not have a pathway into the tech sector. They do not have representation or access to a seat at the table. This in turn compounds the problem of racially biased data as well as racially biased technologies.

The Solution: A multi-pathway program to break barriers and promote cognitive diversity through peer to peer support with a bottoms-up approach from classroom to conferences. We provide Education, Mentoring, Global Peer Network from middle school to early/mid-career professionals.

The barriers to tech and stem careers are education and access to networking and mentors.

DataEthics4All provides everything on one platform.

The problem of racial bias and lack of inclusion in tech is not simple, it is multi fold. A lack of diversity in tech does not have its roots at the employment stage. It starts at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. Then it branches out to mentoring and networking opportunities throughout college and beyond. At each level, the problem has multiple layers, but they all have one thing in common: lack of access. Access to STEM knowledge. Access to mentors, peers, and networking opportunities from a dedicated community of leaders willing to invest in their best interests.

Out of 6 million kids in schools in California alone, 3.3 million of them are Latinos, 300k of them are African Americans, totaling 60 percent. Blacks have a 73 % graduation rate compared to 87 % for Whites and 93 % for Asians. This percentage drops to as low as 54 % with additional barriers like economic, health and social disadvantages. College graduation rate nationwide is at 59%. And drops further down the road to 1% for Venture funding for start-ups and leadership roles at Tech companies. 

DataEthics4All tackles this problem from all angles.

Our 4-fold solution:
Youth: AI Youth Council provides youth with community volunteering opportunities, design programs that help build racial equity while earning President’s Volunteer Service Award. These leaders came up with the idea of starting a FREE STEM Tutoring Club to help students from the underrepresented, underprivileged and COVID impacted communities to help them in Mathematics, Science, Programming and College Prep Essay Reviewing. The Ethics4NextGen AI Global Youth Squad makes it easy for any Middle and High School in the World to start a new Ethics and AI Club.

Leaders: Data Ethics Advisory Council, an independent council of world leaders created a Diversity, Ethics and Responsible AI Framework alongwith resources for operationalizing it, DataEthics4All Community consisting of 700+ Global Leaders at the intersection of Policy, Ethics, Data, Technology and Social Good, Think Tank that promotes AI Research as well as the Data Ethics Institute offers Master Classes.

Radical Solutions: We host global events like Ethics4NextGen AI Summit and Hackathon in racial justice topics where winners proceed to our Open Innovation AI Accelerator.

Enterprise: Ethics4NextGen AI Council for Corporations to discuss strategy around AI Frameworks, implementing end-to-end data ethics governance and building responsible AI.

Our target population are students from low performing, impoverished neighborhoods across the nation, and since most of our courses are online, it has the potential to reach globally. Our programs not only educate but also engage young adults and offer them opportunities to lead, teach and a platform to speak on issues related to Policy, Ethics & Tech with our Youth P.E.T. Speaker Series and Youth P.E.T. Master Classes - 15 Master Classes in Pipeline.

We are contacting them through their schools and in-person whenever possible.

We have currently served 387 adult learners already with our Data Ethics Institute in Data Science & Ethics with the potential to educate more than 5 million kids across the country

We plan to engage with them in the following ways:

1. One on one meeting with the parents to understand their specific needs and struggles.

2. A “Just because” peer accolade program

3. A bi-weekly “No agenda” meeting place in person (or zoom time) to socialize with peers and mentors.

Our solution of increased access and continued access to high quality STEM courses, life-long networking, and peer to peer support for all under privileged, marginalized students across the country is strategically well aligned to the selected dimension. Our belief that lack of fair representation in data, in applications and in AI is a direct result of poor cognitive diversity and it led us down the path of finding a long term solution. Our solution addresses the problem in 4 steps.

Founder and CEO: 1

Full-time Staff: 0

Contractors: 5

Volunteers: 50

1. Data Ethics Advisory Council - 11 Members
2. Data Ethics Youth Advisory Council - 3 Members
3. Leadership Council - 6 Members
4. AI Youth Council - 10 Members
5. Community Leaders - 20 out of 750+ Members

DataEthics4All provides equal opportunities for everyone to get involved fostering diversity, equity and inclusion at every level.

1. Community: 700+ Global Youth and Adult leaders at the intersection of Data, Technology, Policy, Ethics and Social Impact.

2. DataEthics4All Advisory Council: 11 Members from diverse ethnicity, expertise and geographic areas

3. AI Youth Council: 10 Global Members
   

4. DataEthics4All Leadership Council: 6 Members with diverse and inclusive backgrounds
   

5. Data Ethics Institute: helped 300+ students from all backgrounds
   

6. Ethics4NExtGen Opportunity Board: Providing Pathways to Career Success through Academic Institutions such as Cal Poly, SJSU, Woodbury University and Penn University.
   

7. Ethics4NextGen AI Summit: 31 Global Leaders as Speakers on Diversity, Inclusion and Ethics.

8. Ethics4NextGen Hackathon: 250+ People across 11 Countries.
   Highlights include solutions like Gavel 2.0 and Chatbot to report crimes.
9. DataEthics4All Live: 14 Live Discussion Events with diverse speakers

The Hallmark of our mission is our 700+ member platform from students to C-level executives with no barriers for networking and peer-to-peer mentoring, allowing anyone to collaborate, communicate and publish their opinions freely. Hierarchies and rankings have their place in society but when it comes to breaking barriers in education and promoting diversity, they become obstacles. Our platform is designed to dismantle hierarchical interactions when it comes to peer support and networking.

When it comes to barrier free networking, we are pioneers in our field and have no peers. But there are wonderful community organizations like AI4All and Partnership on AI that follow similar pathways of change to promote diversity.

We stand out from them in the following areas apart from our inclusive, free to join, open platform:

• We target middle and high schoolers and even have plans to go as young as elementary schoolers from low-performing schools.
• Our courses and programs are offered at no cost.
• Our initiatives run the gamut from middle school to corporate responsibility and everyone regardless of their age, educational background is allowed a place at the table and a spot on the podium.
• Our Think Tank and Accelerator programs are open to all.
• We host a broad range of free events, podcasts, summits, festivals, and hackathons to encourage innovative solutions for racial equity.
• Our Framework 2.0 and 12 Ethical Pillars, the bedrock of our programs, unequivocally addresses the problem of diversity and ethics both broadly and specifically unlike no other organization.

Our solution is community based, 700+ members with the World’s 1st Independent Data Ethics Advisory Council - 11 Members, one of whom is an Executive Committee of the World Economic Forum.

We have educated over 300+ students in data science and ethics through our Data Ethics Institute, and reached out for FREE STEM tutoring to 100+ low performing schools in California and Florida with a pledge to help 5 million underprivileged and COVID-19 impacted students in the next 5 years.

The Ethics4NextGen Global Youth Squad invites middle and high schools across the world to start a local Ethics & AI Club without having to worry about Ethics and AI Curriculum and Teacher resources.

We hosted an Inaugural AI summit with 31 Global Speakers along with our AI Ethics Hackathon focused on eliminating Racial Bias in AI. First series successfully launched in Sep 2020 with 250 participants from 11 countries and the winners invited to continue in our Ethics4NextGen Open Innovation AI Accelerator and Ethics4NextGen Mentoring Program.

All of our Programs are grounded in our Diversity and Ethics Framework 2.0 and our 12 Ethical Pillars that provide a Roadmap for Companies to translate the Theory of Data Ethics into Practice and become a Data Ethics First Organization that understands building Responsible Tech means ethics is woven into the fabric by design, end to end data governance in place for fair data use across organization and Cognitively Diverse teams to develop the next generation of AI models and systems.

We have proven that this open, inclusive, broad based, bottoms-up approach to promote diversity and ethics in technology works when our first, large scale global event in September attracted 250 participants and attendees from over 11 countries. Out of that, 6 teams completed and presented their solutions to reduce racial bias in data driven AI applications. The solutions were quite innovative because of how cognitively diverse the teams were. A Bias Detection Web tool for Criminal Justice Judges to compare against the notorious predictive algorithm COMPAS and a Chatbot that detects hate speech. The proof that our approach works is in the acceptance of our first research paper at the 15th Annual WIML 2020 Workshop Conference ( Women In Machine Learning ) and an invitation to present our poster this December at WIML 2020 @ NeurNips. Many of our participants and attendees were introduced to Data Science, Ethics and AI Science for the very first time through our AI Boot Camp which ran a day prior to the AI Hackathon.

   We know our method works because of the 700 plus organically formed community of data ethicists and social justice reformers. Their diverse testimonies are captured here.  We have members who joined our organization through word of mouth in a short amount time since our inception. Our members come from 21 different industries, from high school students to C-Suite executives.

Our theory of change posits that diversity is not a checklist. It is not something you can acquire by simply marking a required checklist. We propose that it is a naturally forming ecosystem. An ecosystem that survives and thrives on certain societal elements. Our programs build those elements and sustain them. The lack of diversity in the tech sector and the underlying problems of unethical and biased technology go hand in hand. The biases in AI and the racial injustice problems we see in society is a symptom of that diseased ecosystem. Our programs seek to heal that ecosystem from going back to the basics. By building the pipeline from the ground up and creating a sustainable environment around it.

Based on the Cognitive diversity hypothesis and research mentioned in the following link here, we strongly believe a diverse workforce in the data science/AI technology will lead to the elimination of bias and perpetuation of the racially unjust applications of technology. This cited paragraph from resource says it all: “This research suggests that although homogeneous groups may initially outperform culturally diverse groups, over time diverse groups benefit from a wider range of ideas to choose from when solving a problem. Based on the cognitive diversity hypothesis, these benefits stem from the multiple perspectives generated by the cultural diversity of group members. On the other hand, it takes time for members of diverse groups to work together effectively due to their unfamiliarity with one another, which explains why homogeneous groups outperform heterogeneous groups in the early stages of group functioning.”

We believe that the negative outcomes are due to lack of exposure to diverse groups, which can be negated with a pathway of networking with diverse populations; the focus of our overarching community platform and our Youth Council & Speaker series. Empowered youth of today are the changemakers and leaders of tomorrow. None of these programs will  work unless we open the access to high quality education for our youth and that is where we start with our tutoring in STEM to 5 million kids in 5 years pledge. 

Our goals for the next year and within the next 5 years is to build a pipeline for diversity and inclusion, starting from the schools to the corporate level.

We have an ambitious goal of reaching 5 million kids in 5 years from underrepresented communities, build a stronger networking community of more than 10k members, conduct global annual hackathons in social justice and ethical AI challenges that attract 5k participants from minimum 100 countries, benchmark and recognize 100 companies each year on their diversity and ethics quotient to a total of 500 in 5 years, and accelerate 5 start-ups by underrepresented entrepreneurs each year, to a total of 25 in 5 years.

We know this may not be enough, but the landscape of ethical AI and unbiased, beneficial technology will definitely look like a possibility in 5 years because of our efforts.

We understand that we cannot scale up social impact without partnerships.

We plan to partner with multiple local, regional, and global partners both in the educational sector as well as in the technology sector.

We also believe in partnering with social impact organizations as well as innovative solution seeking groups like Hackathon organizers.

We also plan to partner with criminal justice and law enforcement agencies that operate in minority, impoverished communities to address racial profiling and identify racially biased algorithms.

Our current barriers are far reaching outreach and sustainable financial support. As we are a young and small organization with limited manpower, relatively new to the arena of data ethics, diversity and racial equity building, our reach to the communities and corporates is currently limited by our small volunteer run outreach and limited resources, especially financial resources. We faced tremendous difficulty in securing corporate sponsorships for our inaugural AI Hackathon because the challenges we chose for it were considered too radical and extreme. We chose to highlight the dangers of predictive policing, bias in criminal justice systems and COVID-19 Contact Tracing apps; all highly relevant and timely given the current events in our country. We took that feedback as a badge of honor and proceeded to host the 4-day event by mostly self-funding it with only one company sponsor supporting us.

In terms of our educational pledge, we currently have 18 tutors signed up to tutor students across the state but having difficulty signing students from low performing students given our relatively new profile within the educational community. Establishing our brand and continuing to hold ourselves to higher standards as we build relationships with educators and families across the country in order to succeed in this pledge requires community and financial support. If we fail to secure that, then that will be a major barrier for us in the coming year and next five years.

We plan to overcome these barriers through our continued effort, dedication to our mission. We will do that by reaching and partnering with as many academics, non-profits, and community partnerships. Our outreach is through direct networking and through social media outreach. Our resources currently are limited but given how far we have come with those limitations; we believe can go further and secure the necessary funds and partnerships in the coming months. Submitting to challenges like this one and applying for grants is another way we plan to secure funds and mentorship for our work.

We are not yet at the stage of collecting data on outcomes. We are still working on collecting data on how we can channel our resources. We want to collect data on the specific needs and individual struggles of students and teachers in low performing schools and also collect more precise economic and emotional needs of the families from these neighborhoods. We want to know why the social and governmental interventions around them failed and what can we do to step in that gap.

We want to collect diversity quotient data in terms of inclusion and ethics at the corporate level, starting from companies in California to nationwide.

We are working on those initiatives and hope to have the necessary structure in place before the end of this year.

Social Strategi LLC is a Social Enterprise leading Initiatives that help scale the impact of social good.

One such Initiative is the Social Data for Social Good Initiative, a Free 10 Weeks Marketing Acceleration Program for nonprofits and Social Enterprises.

DataEthics4All, the Organization applying for this Challenge is another such Social Good Initiative led by Social Strategi LLC.

The DataEthics4All Team is well-positioned to deliver this unique solution successfully because of the diverse backgrounds in terms of demographics, ethnicity, geographic locations as well as technical expertise.

Shilpi Agarwal: Founder and Chief Data Ethics Officer of DataEthics4All is a trained Computer Science Engineer with a Masters in Design in Visual Communication from IIT Bombay, a Top University in India. She is a Social Impact Leader, Adjunct Faculty at Stanford and UC Berkeley, MIT $100K Launch Mentor & CEO of Social Strategi LLC, a Social Enterprise that leads initiatives to help scale the impact of social good.

Sheila Warren: is a Member of the World's 1st Data Ethics Advisory Council at DataEthics4All. She's also a member of the Executive Committee of the World Economic Forum and leadership team of the Forum’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR). She works with governments, leading companies, and stakeholders around the world to advance adoption of new technologies in the global public interest. Oversees people & culture strategy across the entire Centre. As an Advisor to DataEthics4All, she adds immense value and direction.

Mei Lin Fung: an active volunteer and DataEthics4All Community Member is the Chair of IEEE IC Social Impact Measurement. Mei is a technology pioneer and an MIT SLOAN graduate where she studied under two future Nobel Economics prize winners. Mei Lin was a finalist for 2018 Woman of the Year at the Silicon Valley Women in IT Awards organized by Information Age.

More of our People

DataEthics4All invites Academic Institutions, Nonprofits and Government Agencies to Partner with us in building Racial Equity through Tech and Breaking Down Barriers of Entry in Tech.

Currently, we have 7 Partner Organizations we're working with: Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at California Polytechnic State University, Girl Develop It, Future of Privacy Forum, Equal Justice Society, All Tech is Human, The Better Ethics and Consumer Outcomes Network, and Society for Healthcare Innovation.

We work with them to cross promote events to reach new audiences, invite them to speak at our events which include the summit and the podcast, we invite them to be a mentor at our hackathon, write an article for our digital magazine, design and teach a Master Class boot camp in our Data Ethics Institute, get invited to speak to their audience, design special courses for their community, write article for their Guides, etc.

Some partnerships that are in the pipeline are also for creating AI Research in our Think Tank and solving their data problems through unique and responsible AI Solutions through our Ethics4NextGen Open Innovation AI Accelerator.

To Foster the Mission of DataEthics4All, we have thoughtfully designed Programs for each of our 5 Key Stakeholders: Youth, Leaders, Enterprise, Startups and Partners.

Our Youth need to be aware and educated on the Ethics of Data Science and the Dangers of using Data Science without Ethical Considerations to become better citizens and leaders of tomorrow.

DataEthics4All’s AI Youth Council consisting of young and brilliant Youth Leaders who under the guidance of the Youth Advisory Council have started some great Initiatives such as the Ethics4NextGen AI Global Youth Squad and the FREE STEM Youth Tutoring Club.

We have an array of Programs designed especially for the Leaders who believe in the Ethics of Data Science.

These Leaders are C-Suite Executives, AI Researchers, Data Scientists, Engineers, Techno nerds, Marketers, Policy Makers, Law Keepers, Attorneys, Healthcare Professionals, Financial Wizards, Ethicists, Philosophers, Educators who come from different socioeconomic backgrounds, age, gender, experience, expertise, geo-locations, and ethnicity.

Our Programs include the World’s 1st Independent Data Ethics Advisory Council for responsible development of Ethics in Data Science, a Youth Advisory Council to guide our Policy, Ethics and Technology Programs for Youth, a Leadership Council that helps with all the DataEthics4All Programs execution, and the DataEthics4All Community consisting of 700+ Global Leaders at the intersection of Policy, Ethics, Data, Technology and Social Good.

A Think Tank that promotes AI Research in Justice, Policy, Ethics and Technology and the Data Ethics Institute that offers Master Classes in Ethics, Data and AI.

Out of our 5 Key Stakeholders: Youth, Individuals, Enterprise, Startups and Partners, we want to be able to offer all of our 20+ Programs that we're offering today, completely FREE if possible to our Youth and Individuals.

Our Business Model is going to be mixed:

1. Free for Service - for Individuals and Youth - free community membership, free ethics training
2. Entrepreneur Support - for our Ethics4NextGen Open Innovation AI Accelerator
3. Market Intermediary - for Enterprise Customers, paid Corporate Memberships

So far, we've received 1 Sponsorship from Voxel51 worth $4,000 for our Ethics4NextGen AI Summit + Bootcamp + Hackathon

Currently, we're not charging for Individual Membership for our DataEthics4All Community, or for any of our Data and Ethics Master Classes in our Data Ethics Institute.

DataEthics4All has luscious goals to build cognitive diversity in Tech and a more inclusive, culture rich and ethical society.

Our goals for the next year and within the next 5 years is to build a pipeline for diversity and inclusion, starting from the schools to the corporate level.

We have an ambitious goal of reaching 5 million kids in 5 years from underrepresented communities, build a stronger networking community of more than 10k members, conduct global annual hackathons in social justice and ethical AI challenges that attract 5k participants from minimum 100 countries, benchmark and recognize 100 companies each year on their diversity and ethics quotient to a total of 500 in 5 years, and accelerate 5 start-ups by underrepresented entrepreneurs each year, to a total of 25 in 5 years.

All of these require dedicated staff and funds to develop new Master Classes, Micro Certifications for new learning Paths, to pay our Tutors, and marketing budget to reach our target audiences.

DataEthics4All seeks $500 Million in Funding through Grants and the rest we hope we can raise through Individual Sponsorships, Corporate Memberships and Corporate Event Sponsorships.

One of the United Nations Sustainable Goals #4 is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

Progress towards inclusive and equitable quality education was too slow even before COVID-19: Over 200 Million children will still be out of school in 2030.

This inequality has compounded due to COVID-19. Remote learning remains out of reach for at least 500 million students

That's why DataEthics4All just made a pledge to support and provide FREE STEM Tutoring to 5 Million kids across the nation in the next 5 years.

According to Tutoring Cost Calculator, Online tutoring costs $25-$50/hr

Assuming student gets help only 1 hour a week, @$25/ hour to be most conservative, it would be a minimum of $100/ month = $1000 for 10 months of tutoring for a year for 1 student.

At the rate of $1,000/ year/ student, we would need funds up to $25 Billion for 5 million students in 5 years.

Assuming 80% of our Tutors are Volunteers, and 20% of Paid Tutors are from the underrepresented, underprivileged and communities of color who could use this as an additional source of income for their families, and because representation is important for students to look up to and aspire to be like someone just like them, we would still need to cover the cost of the remaining 20% to pay our Tutors which is $5 Billion. For every year, we would need $1 Billion.

And this is just for STEM Tutoring alone.

We want to Partner with the Morgridge Family Foundation, New Profit, and other Challenge partners to reach all of our Goals:

DataEthics4All has luscious goals to build cognitive diversity in Tech and a more inclusive, culture rich and ethical society.

Our goals for the next year and within the next 5 years is to build a pipeline for diversity and inclusion, starting from the schools to the corporate level.

We have an ambitious goal of reaching 5 million kids in 5 years from underrepresented communities, build a stronger networking community of more than 10k members, conduct global annual hackathons in social justice and ethical AI challenges that attract 5k participants from minimum 100 countries, benchmark and recognize 100 companies each year on their diversity and ethics quotient to a total of 500 in 5 years, and accelerate 5 start-ups by underrepresented entrepreneurs each year, to a total of 25 in 5 years.

All of these require dedicated staff and funds to develop new Master Classes, Micro Certifications for new learning Paths, to pay our Tutors, and marketing budget to reach our target audiences.

DataEthics4All seeks $5 Million in Funding through Grants and the rest we hope we can raise through Individual Sponsorships, Corporate Memberships and Corporate Event Sponsorships.

We feel that a Partnership like this is a Win-Win for our Society!!

We want Partners to work with us in AI Research related to Ethics, Policy and Technology in our Think Tank.

Work with us in building Responsible AI Solutions to help build Racial Equity in Society through our Ethics4NextGen Open Innovation AI Accelerator.

We want to work with our Partners in providing Pathways to Career Success for the underrepresented, minority and Communities of Color.

We want to build strong Partnerships to reach Elementary, Middle and High Schools across the nation and Globe to provide FREE STEM Tutoring to students, help them develop a love for STEM subjects like Maths and Science, complete college and be successful not just for themselves but for their future generations as well.

We have several Organizations we're already working with like the World Economic Forum, the IEEE, academic institutions such as the San Jose State University, Penn State University, Woodbury University, California Polytechnic State University as well as several nonprofit organizations such as the Future of Privacy Forum, Girl Develop It, and others.

But this is just the beginning. We want to be able to partner with so many more Academic Institutions, Nonprofits and Government Agencies, Private Companies, Foundations, Social Impact Organizations to help foster our mission:

1. Building Responsible Tech with Ethics woven into the Fabric by Design.

2. End-to-End Data Governance across Organization to ensure Ethical Data Use.

3. Cognitive Diversity (Demographic and Functional diversity) and Inclusion in Human Oversight for Building and Auditing the next generation of AI Models and Systems.

We need your help in achieving this Goal and Vision.