Deepra Yusuf has worked to spur technical innovation and promote algorithmic fairness in the private and public sectors at Columbia Technology Ventures and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Harvard Kennedy School alumna also helped create automating.nyc, a website that explains and evaluates the ethical use of algorithmic systems in city government. With a combination of policy and technical skills, and her dedication to ethics, she is ideally suited for her new role as director of strategy and operations for the Columbia-IBM Center for Blockchain and Data Transparency.

Here, Yusuf discusses her background and vision for the center.

Congratulations on your new role! What drew you to this job? 

I started my career in technical roles, but my passion has always been to use data for good, to demystify technology, and to use it to improve people’s lives. As an analyst on the fair lending team at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, I used data and algorithms to determine whether there was a disparate impact in how loans in the auto and mortgage markets were distributed across race, age, and gender. During my master’s in public policy at the Kennedy School, I worked with the Harvard Bloomberg City Leadership Initiative on several urban projects across the country to harness the power of data to tackle longstanding and complex public problems.

Now, as director of the Columbia-IBM Center for Blockchain and Data Transparency, I hope to facilitate a partnership that has the potential to make a significant impact in the advancement of technology. We have already funded three research projects that use blockchain and other data transparency tools to tackle a range of challenges posed by the Covid-19 crises.

Blockchain is an emerging technology. How do you explain it to others? 

Blockchains are decentralized systems that allow records to be stored on a network. They allow for visibility across all users on the blockchain network, subverting the need for more traditional formal institutions. Blockchains have the potential to transform industry and how we share data. Smart contracts, for example, which run on the blockchain, allow for transactions to occur quickly, automatically, and without much of the legal burden associated with traditional contracts. There’s a belief in the tech community that blockchain is like the new internet. One of the central goals of this center is to bring the best minds from academia and industry together to create value for the public; to make this technology work more broadly; and to clearly communicate advances in this field so that the public understands blockchains.  

You helped design automating.nyc. Tell us more about your dedication to fairness in technology. 

Data collection and algorithmic systems are becoming more pervasive in our lives. We already unknowingly use data and algorithms to make daily decisions. And what is more worrisome to me is that they are often used, without our explicit consent or knowledge, by the government and private sector to make decisions about us. Sometimes the intent is good. But often there are unforeseen consequences that harm the most vulnerable in our society. Moreover, generally, these systems are shrouded in secrecy or accessible only to those with technical knowledge. One of my biggest passions is to shed light into the black box that is algorithmic systems.

Automating.nyc was born out of a desire to educate New Yorkers about algorithms used by city government. But we also wanted to educate people about how algorithms can be biased and the impacts they have. In 2018, NYC established an ADS Taskforce to review NYC’s use of automated decision systems, i.e., algorithms. While the task force was an important first step, we wanted the public to be able to hold the task force to account, to be able to ask probing questions at public meetings, and to take this issue into their own hands. Understanding algorithms and the ways in which they impact our lives will be central to advocating for better public services, privacy, and reform in our society.

What do you think can be done to bring more women of color into technical fields?

When I started out as an analyst, I felt somewhat out of place, both as a woman of color and in my beliefs. Data then was viewed as objective. Using an algorithm, for example, was seen as objectively good. If a system was made faster or more efficient through using data and algorithms, then it had undoubtedly been improved—no matter the unintended consequences. I knew something was wrong with this kind of thinking, but I couldn’t pinpoint it. 

During my first year at graduate school, a group of us formed a reading group around the ProPublica piece on the biased algorithms used to predict recidivism rates for prisoners. That reading opened up a whole new lexicon for me, with terms such as algorithmic justice, ethics in data science, and machine bias. What attracted me more to this fairness movement was that it was largely led by women. Works such as Weapons of Math Destruction, Automating Inequality, and Algorithms of Oppression, were all written by women. Our own Jeannette Wing has woven ethics and social impact into the institute’s mission. Women are really leading the movement for ethics in data science. I hope I can be a force in this movement as well. 

What are some of your ideas for the center? 

Well, we have already accomplished a lot. We conducted nine research projects, three of which are Covid-19 related. We also organized workshops on topics such as noninvasive brain computer interface data, helped IBM hire several Columbia interns, and sponsored 18 Columbia startups to participate in the Innovation Accelerator. This summer marked the two-year anniversary of the center. We hosted a showcase kickoff event featuring talks from Columbia researchers and IBM experts on building incentives for data transparency and blockchains; systems implementation for technology; economics, policy, privacy and ethics; and supply chains. There were also pitches from Columbia-IBM Launch Accelerator teams.  

We have done so much great work, and one thing I want to ensure is that we make this work visible. I also want to preserve and advance our relationship with IBM. While the contract for the center is limited to another year, our relationship with IBM doesn’t have to be. The Columbia-IBM relationship is one with a long and distinguished history. IBM founded its Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University in 1945, during the final months of World War II—first to provide computing services to the Allies, and then to advance state-of-the-art scientific computing throughout the world. I believe there is still so much work that Columbia and IBM can do together, and I want to help create the foundation for that future through this center. 

What value does the center bring to society? 

The center brings together cross-disciplinary teams to advance innovation in blockchain and data transparency and related topics for the good of society. Overall, it seeks to drive science and technology, develop thought leadership, and influence policy. Our aim is support not just cutting-edge research in the underlying technologies that allow secure data sharing, but also to invent new business models, services, and policies, and incubate startups that will commercialize the applications of these technologies. 

— Robert Florida