Jessie J. Smith (Jess) is a PhD student at The University of Colorado Boulder researching machine learning and AI ethics with an emphasis on algorithmic fairness and transparency. Jess previously interned for the FATE (Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics in AI) team at Microsoft Research. She is currently working on building tools to promote algorithmic transparency in fairness-aware recommender systems. Her work seeks to improve algorithmic literacy, trust, and agency in 'multistakeholder' systems, especially when values come into conflict with one another [read more about this work].
Jess is also co-host of The Radical AI Podcast (ranked in Top 30 Technology Podcasts on iTunes) discussing the most pressing issues of AI and society with world-renowned experts such as Ruha Benjamin and Timnit Gebru.
Jess was previously a graduate instructor for introductory Computer Science (in Python) at CU Boulder and is helping restructure the curriculum to include more case studies and ethical speculation for the unintended consequences of technology. Check out Jess' open source repo for intro coding courses that includes 5 modules for teaching ethics and social science through the lens of coding!
Jess is co-advised Dr. Casey Fiesler and Dr. Robin Burke. She is a member of the Internet Rules Lab and That Recommender Systems Lab.
