Life, death and data. AI’s capacity to support research on human health is real. But so are the harms of biased datasets and misdiagnoses. How can AI developers build healthier systems? We take a look at a new dataset for Black skin health, a Covid chatbot in Rwanda, AI diagnostics in rural India, and more.
Who’s in this episode?
Avery Smith is a software engineer in Maryland who lost his wife to skin cancer. This inspired him to create the Black Skin Health AI Dataset and the web app, Melalogic.
Remy Muhire works on open source speech recognition software in Rwanda, including a Covid-19 chatbot, Mbaza, which 2 million people have used so far.
Radhika Radhakrishnan is a feminist scholar who studies how AI diagnostic systems are deployed in rural India by tech companies and hospitals and the limits of consent.
Jen Caltrider is the lead investigator on a special edition of Mozilla’s “Privacy Not Included” buyer’s guide that investigated the privacy and security of mental health apps.
Further reading
About IRL
IRL is an original podcast from Mozilla, the non-profit behind Firefox. In this season that doubles as Mozilla’s 2022 Internet Health Report, our host Bridget Todd, shares stories of people who are building and regulating AI systems in more equitable ways.
Tell us what you think
We’d love to hear what ideas this year’s report sparked for you. Do you build or research AI? Do you work on AI policy? Which podcast episodes inspired you or challenged you? If you send us a comment in this form, we guarantee it will be read by a human.