IEEE Survey Finds That Female Technologists Face Unequal Treatment and Sexist WorkplacesFemale IEEE members say they face significant discrimination in the workplace, including demeaning comments, inappropriate job-interview questions, and exclusion from networking events and important business meetings.
Publish date: 05/15/2019
Kickstarter Workers Kick Off a Union Organizing Drive; NPM Allegedly Fires Engineers for Organizing EffortsIn January of 2018, Lanetix, a company that creates cloud-based tools for the shipping and transportation industry, fired 14 engineers shortly after they petitioned to be represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA).
Publish date: 05/08/2019
With “Leapfrog” Technologies, Africa Aims to Skip the Present and Go Straight to the FutureBy 2022, forecasters estimate that sub-Saharan Africa will have nearly 1 billion mobile phones—enough for the vast majority of the projected 1.2 billion people who will live there. What it won’t have are the endless streams of telephone poles and wires that cascade across other continents.
Publish date: 05/08/2019
Should Data Scientists Need Certification?In hopes of growing the supply of data scientists—and clarifying the definition—the Open Group, an IT industry consortium that offers certification programs in IT architecture and risk analysis, this week announced that it has established a certification program for data scientists.
Publish date: 05/08/2019
What Can Machine Learning Tell Us?The breathless headline caught my eye: “Computer Shows Human Intuition—AI Breakthrough!” (or words to that effect). What fascinated me was how the program had been constructed. Instead of being tuned by expert players, AlphaZero initially knew nothing more than the rules of chess. It learned how to play, and to win, by playing against itself. Soon it got so good it could beat everyone and everything.
Publish date: 05/08/2019
Women Can’t Climb the Ladder, Leave Tech JobsWhile companies tout their diversity programs aimed at attracting women to tech, the percentage of women with computer science careers has fallen in recent years, and women leave the field at a much higher rate than men.
Publish date: 05/08/2019
Scandals Don’t Affect Tech Workers’ Desire to Work in the IndustryThe tech industry has had its share of scandals lately. There was Google’s handling of sexual misconduct charges against executives, the resignation of Intel CEO Brian Krzanich after he had a relationship with an employee that violated company policy, and Facebook’s data privacy violations, to name just a few. Incidents like these have certainly drawn negative publicity for the companies involved, but is it hurting the way tech workers feel about their own industry?
Publish date: 05/02/2019
Untold History of AI: How Amazon’s Mechanical Turkers Got Squeezed Inside the MachineIn this six-part series, we explore that human history of AI—how innovators, thinkers, workers, and sometimes hucksters have created algorithms that can replicate human thought and behavior (or at least appear to).
Publish date: 05/02/2019
Q&A With Chair of New Ad Hoc Committee on Diversity, Inclusion, and EthicsThe IEEE Board of Directors in February approved an ad hoc committee on diversity, inclusion, and professional ethics. The Institute interviewed IEEE Fellow Andrea Goldsmith, chair of the committee, about what the group will be working on, what led to its formation, and what diversity and inclusion mean in a global organization.
Publish date: 05/02/2019
Early Warning System Predicts Risk of Online Students Dropping OutIt’s easy enough for students to sign up for online university courses, but getting them to finish is much harder.
Publish date: 05/01/2019
