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phone: 510-885-4167, Room SF 551 Dr. Grewe has her PhD from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Purdue University. She has a number of years industrial experience and academic experience. Her research interests include Computer Vision, Media Processing and AI. She has recently served while on sabbatical at Google as a Faculty in Residence.
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Dr. Lynne L. Grewe
Tell about your foray into tech world?
- I began my career as an Undergraduate student as an intern at Intel Corporation. It was exciting to come to Silicon Valley, the heart of much tech invention and becoming part of a major leading tech company. I learned a lot including what I didnt' like to do. I strongly encourage students to look for any opportunity to work/participate in the tech industry before they graduate.
- I subsequently worked at HP and Hughes Research Labs. I learned working at a research lab how much I liked the independence and autonomy of doing research.
- I worked full time at IBM corporation who also sponsored me for my PhD. I was a Vision specialist and worked with research and an International team on unique vision based systems. I enjoyed working on an international team but, working across time zones is a challenge.
Did your education prepare you to think through social, ethical impacts in tech?
- Honestly, no. Ethics was not a required and because I was so interested in so many tech courses I did not look into this course.
- However, working in Industry and in an area related to AI, I quickly became interested. I now see the importance and value of this kind of education and to make it more attractive to students, I have long petitioned it to be approved for GE credits which I was able to finally achieve. My hope is all CS students will take advantage of this and take this course.
Is ethics in technology different than other sectors?
- Yes and No.
- No because many concepts are the same. Think about the Medical Field and their Hippocratic Oath to "Do No Harm". That should be an leading tenant in tech ethics also.
- Yes because unlike any other sector, "technology" encompases most of the inventions and rapid changes of our society in the last centuries. Ofcourse there are advances in other areas like Medicine but, many of those are tech advances - think of MRIs and XRays and BioEngineering --- these are fusions of tech with medicine or another way to think of it is applied technology. Also, other areas like Medicine are definitely more strictly regulated that tech is. There is good and bad and this dual answer leads to really interesting dilemmas and drives a lot of the interesting discussions/readings in this class.
Was there a culture of discussing ethics when you were at Google or other companies you worked for?
- Yes, in fact the day I joined Google (a Noogler) was the day they had a TGIF (thank god its friday talk- company wide talk where company leaders discuss issues and take Q&A) on the fopic of Machine Learning and ethics. It was fantastic as a researcher in computer vision based Machine Learning and a professor who teaches ethics to be there. Just Great!
- Each company I worked for had different ways of addressing this. However, I will say that as time has gone on I have seen a much greater interest in tech ethics. However, I do believe that depending on the sector of tech you work in and the field ethics is not necessarily part of your daily thoughts as a SW Engineer. I think that ML and issues of data bias and the rapid explosion of automation technologies--this sector is thinking about those issues if not daily maybe weekly. I think other sectors like BioEngineering and Medical Englineering also have ethics in their forefront. I also believe there is a big difference in where you work ---meaning what country and the laws. For example, I believe that the European Union is more dilligent in protecting privacy than in the US and have greater restrictions on what companies can/should do legally with regards to ethical technology.