This is the signup page for the in-person London book club. We'll also be meeting in Edinburgh and online - follow the hyperlinks to sign up for those instead.

Please arrive bteween 615 and 630 for a prompt start at 630pm. This session of the book club is kindly supported by Domestic and General and hosted by Newspeak House.

Topic: Recommender systems

Our next data science ethics bookclub is on recommender systems. You are welcome to pick from this reading list, depending on your interest and the time you have:

Articles

- “How Recommendation Algorithms Run the World” is a Wired article giving an overview of recommender systems and associated risks by Zeynep Tufekci.

- “YouTube’s algorithms might radicalise people – but the real problem is we’ve no idea how they work” is an article from The Conversation, by Chico Q. Camargo

- Business Insider article: Former Google data scientist: Don’t blame the internet for dividing the country

Academic journal articles

- “Recommender Systems and their Ethical Challenges” is an academic review paper by Milano, Taddeo & Floridi

- “Regulating Recommending: Motivations, Considerations, and Principles” is an academic paper by Cobbe and Singh

Quick reads

- Five risks of news personalization - particularly good for the non-technical reader

Tutorial

- “Experimentation with fairness-aware recommendation using librec-auto” is material for a hands-on tutorial from FAT* Conference 2020, by Burke and Mansoury

*FAQs*

Why are we doing this?

There's a lot of good writing out there and one of the most important principles (even in our own ethical principles) is to discuss and debate the ethical questions.

We hope this will help people gain the tools they need to think about this in their jobs or in DataKind projects, or in encountering algorithmic tools in their everyday life. But if all you get out of it is some friendly discussion over a coffee or beer, that works too :-)

Do I need to be a data scientist to participate?

Nope. We'll have a mix of technical and non-technical reading material. The aim is to think about data science in a context of ethical impacts and consequences - and that affects everybody!

Is there an online option?

We will be hosting an online group alongisde the in-person event - if you'd like to join remotely, please select the 'remote bookclub' option from the ticket options above. We'll also be live tweeting using the hashtag #DKbookclub and taking comments/questions.

I have a brilliant idea for reading material/a theme! Who do I tell?

We love suggestions! Tell us at contact@datakind.org.uk