Politics Archives – Page 2 of 4

Juneteenth

5 years ago By cumeadi

I learned about Juneteenth for the first time in 3rd grade. Ms. Anderson, the student-teacher in my class at the time, read to us about how Major General Gordon Granger landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the slaves were now free. This was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. (signed in 1863)

“The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired laborer.” – General Order #3

I may have learned about it at an early age, but I didn’t understand the significance of Juneteenth until I moved to Washington DC in 2010 DOE (During Obama’s Era). Juneteenth was celebrated throughout Through my students and the community, I got to see what Juneteenth looks like up close. I got a chance to participate in parades, go to exhibits opened up specifically to celebrate the day, and enjoy cookouts. I may have participated but it didn’t click until a couple of weeks later.

This was also my first fourth of July in the nation’s capital. Of course, there was a ton of stuff to do. I got a chance to visit the monuments, went to a couple of cookouts, and watched fireworks. I also got to listen to President Obama’s 4th of July speech.

He mentioned something always normally mentioned in most 4th of July presidential addresses but it hit differently.

“Two hundred and thirty-four years later, the words are just as bold, just as revolutionary, as they were when they were first pronounced: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all 1 men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” (to read the whole speech click here.)

And at that point, I realized what Juneteenth meant. It was more than the celebration of the end of slavery. Juneteenth is the celebration of a promise fulfilled. Part of the quote in Obama’s speech is from the Declaration of Independence.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

All men… created equal… endowed by their creator… inalienable rights… This is what the founding fathers wrote to King George to justify their need to break away from Great Britain and form their own country. This is the foundation of what drove collective action in the revolutionary war. People fought against an oppressive regime for these inalienable rights.

Sounds familiar? It’s crazy a country that had just shed blood over these inalienable rights would then go and create a 10x more oppressive state for black people. That isn’t living up to its promise if this isn’t for everyone. That’s why June 19th, 1865 is so important. The end of slavery as a state-sanctioned institution in the United States brought us one giant step closer to a more perfect union.

As we can all see, we’ve still got a long way to go. That’s for damn sure. I see all the companies getting the day off and all the celebrations around the country and honestly, it’s great to see. But I wonder, do people get it? Do they understand why Juneteenth is so central to the history of the United States? Do they understand, its way more than a black holiday? This is our history. This is the history of us.

#MentalNote · History · Politics · startups · venture capital

It’s Time To Build Pt. 2

5 years ago By cumeadi

Marc Andreessen, one of the co-founders of Andreessen Horowitz, wrote a timely piece during the height of the US COVID-19 crisis. Titled “ It’s Time to Build “. It’s essentially a call to arms for builders to focus on creating a better reality where we’re prepared for tomorrow’s challenges. It was a collective call to create a more conducive environment for builders and sounded like a call to get back to what made the United States great; making and creating.

Fast track to George Floyd’s death and we’ve seen a significant outpouring of support and collective action around ending racism and destroying racist institutions. Now more than ever, there’s an awakening to the fact that black people are suffering from systems built to disenfranchise and systematically ensure they’re held down. We’re at a pivotal point globally. We’ve all seen the decentralized protests around the world demanding change and justice for George Floyd and others who have died at the hands of those sworn to protect them. People, now more than ever, want to tear down and rebuild these institutions.

As we think of building and tearing down institutions we should make sure we’re focused on building a more inclusive type of institution. The only way we’ll really achieve the promise of a future where there’s equality for all is to ensure everyone is in the workshop as we’re building. We know this is currently not the reality. Black people lag behind on most indicators that would lead them to be in the rooms to be a part of this building process. In venture capital, for example, where the rubber meets the road when it comes to building, the stats are abysmal. For those who aren’t familiar with the venture capital space, here’s some data to provide some color:

77.1 percent of founders were white—regardless of gender and education.
Just one percent of venture-backed founders were black.
Women-funded startups received only 9 percent of investments.
Latino founders made up 1.8 percent of those receiving funding, while Middle Easterners totaled 2.8 percent.
Asians were the second most-backed group, making up 17.7 percent of venture-backed founders.

From Ratemyinvestor.com

We can’t build this new reality if there’s this much inequality in the venture capital industry. I don’t think individual actors are deliberately enforcing inequality – I believe the “system” of risk capital is flawed and perpetuates actors to not act in an equitable way. Venture capital is just one example. There are disparities in healthcare, education, job creation, urban development, and etc. Everywhere we look, there are systems that disproportionally affect black people, and most of the time, for the worst.

If we aren’t careful, we’ll build on the same bias and power structures and we’ll be back in the same spot 20 years from now wondering how we got to where we are.

Politics

Thank You 45

8 years ago By cumeadi

Dear 45,

I hope all is well. I know you’ve had a pretty rough couple of months with the new job and all. I’d thought I’d brighten it up by sending a note of thanks. As you’ve quickly realized, the presidency is a thankless job so I thought I’d share 3 things I’m thankful you’ve knowingly or unknowingly done.

You’ve shown all the leaders of tomorrow anything is truly possible under the right circumstances.

I’ve always thought there’s a guide/ steps to becoming a leader. Leadership requires trials and tribulations, you have to have self-awareness, earn the loyalty of your followers, be a consensus builder, etc…. We can throw the last 30 years of leadership cannon down the drain. Seems like there’s a little bit more to leadership than I thought. I guess I missed something.

You single- handily forced America to have the conversations we’ve been running from since our founding.

I don’t know how you did it or if you did this on purpose but kudos. We are having all types of conversations now. What is the role of the executive branch and what are the real checks on power? What is the role of the 4th estate (journalism) and what will it look like going forward? How are we going to reconcile our past in a way that is inclusive of experiences and true to reality? Do we really need the electoral college? Do protests really work? Yes, there’s definitely a separation of church and state but is there a separation of morality and state? What kind of country do we want to be? Was Kanye right?* How do we walk toward the future without leaving others behind? There’s probably a ton more but you’ve got people talking and some of those conversations are translating to significant action.

You’ve shown us how to accelerate Globalism.

A mono-polar world works when there are institutions that give the rest of the world confidence in leadership. With your presidency, you’ve accelerated the need for other nations to take on leadership on the global stage and accelerated the start multi-polar political reality we’ll have to navigate for years to come.**

Thanks again for your work so far. I can’t wait to see what other things you have in store.

Best,

Chika Umeadi

*Kanye said, “Racism still alive, they just be concealing it.” Actually…. #Charlottesville

**Most will argue we were already in a transition to a multi-polar reality globally. I’d agree when looking at economic and military might. However, with Trump’s presidency, we’ve fragmented our power in the political space by bringing China and other regional players to prominence and creating uncertainty in US leadership.

Politics · Technology

Automated Justice: The Role of Artificial Intelligence In The US Justice System

8 years ago By cumeadi

(Quick crash course on what artificial intelligence is for those who might need a refresher.)

According to this Hubspot article released a couple of weeks ago, here’s a list of jobs that they think will most likely be taken by artificial intelligence (AI) in the next few years.

Telemarketers
Bookkeeping Clerks
Compensation and Benefits Manager
Receptionist
Couriers
Proofreaders
Computer Support Specialists
Market Research Analysts
Advertising Salespeople
Retail Salespeople

Here’s a list of jobs I think AI will take in the next 10 years:

Wealth advisers
Lawyers
Pilot
Tax Auditor
Truck Driver
Taxi Drivers
Investment Banker
Doctors?
Computer Programmer
Musician

If we get to the point we can depend on AI to take care of our health, transportation, taxes, money, and entertainment, why not go all the way and allow AI to enter areas of public institutions like our justice system? I thought I wouldn’t find much research on AI in the judicial system. It would be the one place AI dare not touch. Wrong.

Here’s an expert of an article from the Guardian. I’ts about 9 months old.

The AI “judge” has reached the same verdicts as judges at the European court of human rights in almost four in five cases involving torture, degrading treatment and privacy.

The algorithm examined English language data sets for 584 cases relating to torture and degrading treatment, fair trials and privacy. In each case, the software analysed the information and made its own judicial decision. In 79% of those assessed, the AI verdict was the same as the one delivered by the court.

The article goes on to say:

Dr Nikolaos Aletras, the lead researcher from UCL’s department of computer science, said: “We don’t see AI replacing judges or lawyers, but we think they’d find it useful for rapidly identifying patterns in cases that lead to certain outcomes.

“It could also be a valuable tool for highlighting which cases are most likely to be violations of the European convention on human rights.” An equal number of “violation” and “non-violation” cases were chosen for the study.

So it’s happening. There are people thinking, researching, and applying AI to judicial processes. Based on this particular simulation, its not that far off either. At 79% of verdicts in alignment with human judge verdicts, it will only get better and most likely serve as a qualifier/screening tool for cases that should be evaluated by human rights judges.

Dr. Aletras’ work seems very academic and more research focused with limited impact on the day to day European Human Rights Courts. Maybe in the future, they’ll be some application but not today. That may be the case for AI as a judge but how about other parts of the judicial system?

Then, I came upon this article in the New York Times that discusses how AI already plays a significant role in the judicial process. It’s a couple weeks old. AI systems are used from everything to evaluating evidence like DNA and fingerprints, to deploying police officers in the most efficient manner. Here’s a quick story from one of the applications that shows one of the key challenges:

“Take the case of Glenn Rodriguez. An inmate at Eastern Correctional Facility in upstate New York, MR. Rodriguez was denied parole last year despite having a nearly perfect record of rehabilitation . The reason? A high score from a computer system called Compas. The company that makes Compas considers the weighting of inputs to be proprietary information. That force Mr. Rodriguez to rely on his own ingenuity to figure out what had gone wrong.

This year, Mr. Rodriguez returned to the parole board with the same faulty Compas score He had identified an error in one of the inputs for his Compas assessment. But without knowing the input weights, he was unable to explain the effect of his error, or persuade anyone to correct it. Instead of challenging the result, he was left to try to argue for parole despite the result. “

Did Mr. Rodriguez deserve parole? Based on traditional parole metrics, yes. He has near perfect record of rehabilitation. Based on Compas, a private company that essentially tries to predict likelihood of recidivism based on “proprietary data” and “algorithms”, Mr. Rodriguez stood a higher than usual chance of coming back to jail and thought it would just make more sense to keep him there. Have you spotted the problem yet?

Back in the day, when I aspired to play point guard in the NBA, I would focus on shooting a ton of free throws. I thought if I could just get a high volume of free throws, I could increase my percentage. I was missing a ton of free throws and it didn’t look like shooting more was helping. It wasn’t until my eighth grade coach told me, ” Practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.” I can shoot all I want but if I have garbage form, I’m just practicing garbage form and wasting my time. As most of you know, my basketball career ended in retirement in eighth grade, but that lesson has stayed with me and has ample significance to AI and machine learning.

In order to improve AI and machine learning algorithms, they must be trained by real data. Specifically in the justice system, companies will work with the state and federal government to train and develop all types of algorithms. The problem is these systems often compound societal and institutional realities they are supposed used to prevent. They may be trained with a high volume of data, but its just like me shooting with bad form.

Remember Mr. Rodriguez? Lets take a look at ProPublica’s evaluation of Compas’s Recidivism Algorithm to see if we can see if there are any insights into Compas’s performance.(Give it a read if you have a chance) Here’s the summary of their analysis:

“Our (ProPublica) analysis found that:

Black defendants were often predicted to be at a higher risk of recidivism than they actually were. Our analysis found that black defendants who did not recidivate over a two-year period were nearly twice as likely to be misclassified as higher risk compared to their white counterparts (45 percent vs. 23 percent).

White defendants were often predicted to be less risky than they were. Our analysis found that white defendants who re-offended within the next two years were mistakenly labeled low risk almost twice as often as black re-offenders (48 percent vs. 28 percent).

The analysis also showed that even when controlling for prior crimes, future recidivism, age, and gender, black defendants were 45 percent more likely to be assigned higher risk scores than white defendants.

Black defendants were also twice as likely as white defendants to be misclassified as being a higher risk of violent recidivism. And white violent recidivists were 63 percent more likely to have been misclassified as a low risk of violent recidivism, compared with black violent recidivists.

The violent recidivism analysis also showed that even when controlling for prior crimes, future recidivism, age, and gender, black defendants were 77 percent more likely to be assigned higher risk scores than white defendants.”

How interesting, the analysis from ProPublica looks like it mimics some of the realities we see in our justice system. This shouldn’t be surprising, the Compas algorithm was most likely trained using data from states that most likely have laws, procedures, convictions, and outcomes in place that disproportionately affects males, and people of color and people in urban areas. It most likely has data points from over-policed areas.

When we leverage AI and machine learning, for any industry, we have to make sure we don’t allow the flaws in our institutions to creep into the systems we develop. If we do, the solutions are causing more harm than good.

-ProPublica published the calculations and data for this analysis on github

Education · Politics · Random · Uncategorized

The Rise of Pseudo Intellectualism

9 years ago By cumeadi

What is pseudo intellectualism?

Pseudo Intellectualism, as defined by dictionary.com is:

Exhibiting intellectual pretensions that have no basis in sound scholarship.
Pretending an interest in intellectual matters for reasons of status.

There’s no other time in the history of the world we have a limitless amount of knowledge at our fingertips. Traditionally, we’ve depended on institution and life experience to dictate who had access to knowledge but as a result of technological advances, we’ve seen a rapid democratization of knowledge in a way which overloads how we identify who and what is intellectual.

Instead of leaning on academic credentials, intellectual pursuits, and/or age, we’ve become a society focused on stance and position. We focus on a person’s ability to create a stance and answer a question instead of the pursuit of the right question. Ultimately, the pursuit of questions or answers is what differentiates an intellectual from a pseudo intellectual. The answer can be 42 but what is the ultimate question?

What are some examples?

Example of pseudo intellectualism is all around us. My favorite example of pseudo intellectualism are some people that consider themselves “woke”. Woke, for those asking what that even means in this context, is the awareness of systems and messages that facilitate social injustice. Some people will recite to you all the reasons said systems exist and how they are impacted but then enforce the same systems on other people. This shows a puedo understanding of what the systems are and how they impact a group’s existence.

Another example is our election process in the US. You are well informed if you identify key platform positions for each candidate. We regurgitate positions, history, topics of contention, but rarely ask why. Why does this position exist? Why are they on this side of the issue? What are the long term implications of this person’s position? We are hand fed talking points by the news and use them in conversation. As a result, they eventually become a force framework for how we think about the election. It becomes this vs that. The forced dichotomy prevents us from asking bigger questions that challenge the election process.

Is it bad for society?

Yes and no. The traditional role of intellectuals was to move the “pursuit of knowledge” forward so others can partake in its fruits. We’ve gotten to a point where there’s so much information and knowledge openly available, we need people who will curate and provide us with a bite sized understanding with the hope an average of bite sized summaries and positions will get us closer to understanding topics of interest.

To counter, pseudo intellectualism lulls people into a surface understanding of life. We outsource intellectual processing to other parties so we just become consumers of knowledge without knowing what went into making it. What’s in that burger?

How can we do better?

There are three simple ways we can combat pseudo intellectualism.

Call out people who exhibit pseudo intellectual habits.
Always ask why
Be wary of those who point to an absolute truth…. One of my favorite sayings, “Nothing is true, everything is permitted.” is from Assassin’s Creed. “To say ‘Nothing is True’, is to realise that the foundations of society are fragile, and that we must be the shepherds of our own civilisation. To say that ‘Everything is Permitted’, is to understand that we must live with the consequences of our actions whether good or bad.”