Noble Discussion Questions

Do Now: Word Cloud

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In a word, describe your feelings on the findings presented in

the first few chapters of Noble's book.
Introduction Questions
● On page one, Noble states that she believes artificial intelligence will become a
major human rights issue in the 21st century. After reading through the first
two chapters do you agree or disagree with this statement? (follow up, did your
opinion change at all because of the reading?)
● In 2015, U.S. News and World Report reported that there was a “glitch” in
Google’s algorithm thus leading to two major problems: “N*gger House” and
the auto tagging of African Americans as “animals.” Do you remember hearing
about these problems? Have you ever come across any racist or sexist auto
suggest results on Google?
● Refer to page one. What does the author mean by technological redlining?
● https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ixom8QASk5nQlctnBQ6jJ5Od6zrkCEb
z9yS9yr3n9U0/edit?usp=sharing
Chapter 1 Questions
● Take another look at the google searches on page 20-22. What aspects stuck
out to you the most?
● What effect do you think interventions like Black Girl Code could have on the
current epidemic at Google? Is this something that Google should invest in to
save themselves?
● “73% of search engine users say that most or all the information that they find
as they use search engines is accurate and trustworthy.” Before reading this
book, did you fall in the 73% of people? What effect do you think that had on
you? What effect would it have on students?
● What does “google bombing” mean? How does Google’s PageRank system
work? (pg 46)
Chapter 2 Questions
In Chapter 2 (pg. 66), Noble poses the following question: “If Google’s software
engineers are not responsible for the design of their algorithms, then who is?” and
goes on to suggest that in order to fix this issue, a “...detailed and rigorous study of
people and communities…” is required.

● Do you think that this is the only solution?

● Do you believe that including studies like this would help or hinder the
popularity of a company or use of a search engine like Google?

What are the implications of this in your classroom? How does a major corporation
like Google using this message of “we’re not responsible for the design of the
algorithm” affect how you present digital citizenship, critical literacy and
responsibility?
Activity
Your group will be assigned one of the following topics to search. Using google images,
search your term. Take a screenshot of your results and upload it onto a new slide.
Analyze your findings. Compare them with the other members of your group. Are they
the same results? Are they different? Then, use another search engine (ie: yahoo, bing)
and compare/contrast those results. Do you see any examples or racism or sexism?

● Teacher:
● Doctor:
● Nurse:
● Unprofessional Hairstyles:
● Three black teenagers:
● Three white teenagers:
● Black girls
● White girls
Doctors On both sites, mostly white male doctors appear. However,
Google has an image of one black male doctor and one middle
eastern doctor. Yahoo showed one woman doctor.

Google Yahoo
Three Black
Teenagers
Google
Yahoo
Three White
Teenagers
Google
Yahoo
 Bing search: 27 pictures
-4 black teachers
- 15 white teachers
Teacher -7 asian teachers
-9 male teachers
-22 female teachers
-White women dominate
the images.

Google search: 19 images

-15 women (13 white, 1 asian, 1 black)
-4 men (2 white, 1 asian, 1 black)
-White women dominate the images
-
Unprofessional Hairstyles

Note: What we
see now has
somewhat
improved since
this story first
broke weeks
back; however,
there is still
clear bias.

In comparison Google and Bing came up with the same results. If you compare the results to
searching “professional hairstyles” you will notice that the unprofessional hairstyles pulls up
results of predominantly black women while professional hairstyles brings results of white men and
women.
Young man
Nurse
Women

Brunette Google

Happy/Smiling

Petite

Yahoo
Black Girls/White Girls
Google Auto Search Suggestions: