Author: Winston Thomas
Publisher: CDO Trends
Publication Year: 2022
Summary: The following article starts by questioning who the authority on data ethics will be, especially as cultural and legal definitions vary by region and nation. Jay Upchurch, the CIO of SAS, says concerns about how to address and solve data ethics problems led the company to create its Data Ethics Practice (DEP). The DEP is a cross-functional global team to help employees and customers deploy data-driven systems that promote human well-being, agency, and equity, and SAS believes its effectiveness comes from putting humans at the center of the innovation process. The most urgent challenge facing data workers is bias in pretrained models. SAS is addressing this by building model validation capabilities that allow to flag data sources that may be inherently biased. Upchurch urges other companies to consider the value of data ethics as well, and claims this is an industry responsibility.