Confronting Ethical Challenges in a High-Tech World
MEETING FOR THE WEEK OF April 15, 2024
This Meeting at a Glance:
Program: Confronting Ethical Challenges in a High-Tech World
Speaker: Mehran Sahami
Is this your first time to visit us? If so, welcome to our weekly online meeting! To complete our meeting, please continue reading from here to the bottom of this page. Each Monday our week’s meeting is posted early in the morning, U.S. Pacific Time. These meetings are designed so that you can read and watch what we post anytime during the week. The entire meeting takes about 60 minutes to complete, with the video conference recording of the program being the bulk of the time. Note that you can easily read this meeting with your favorite device, so feel free to take our meeting on the go with you. Please also make sure to complete the attendance form at the bottom and leave a comment. Enjoy!
To properly attend this meeting, please:
Read and watch the content below in its entirety.
Complete the attendance survey.
Everyone is also encouraged to leave a comment in the Disqus section at the bottom of the page.
Message from our President
Greetings Members and Friends of Rotary e-Club of Silicon Valley. As President of our Club, I want to welcome you all today.
WEEKLY FUNNY WITH SHAGS
We believe laughter is an important part of life, and we should all make time to laugh a little. This segment of our meeting is meant to tickle you just enough. These funnies are curated by member Steven "Shags" Shagrin!
Is THIS a Dad Joke??
What do you call someone who tells Dad Jokes but isn't a dad?
A faux pa."
INSPIRATION
Every week we share a short video highlighting innovation, education, entrepreneurship, or whatever we think might inspire you to see the world in new ways.
Another musical inspiration this week! We've had this video on the site before, but as it's approaching a quarter billion views, it sounded like an effort worth helping along. Like so many great videos, there are multiple storylines as it goes along, and how many you see is certainly a function of how much detail you look for. Marble Machine by Wintergatan - enjoy!
LEARN SOMETHING NEW
Ever Hear of Helen Shapiro? She Sang to the Beatles...
Helen Shapiro (b. 1946) is a British pop & jazz singer and actress. In 1963 she recorded this video with three of the Fab Four. Paul was in another studio when this was produced. Too bad--that would have made this even better! I'm pretty sure you knew Ringo was #2 from behind. FYI, they were HER supporting act in her 1963 tour!!
Club News
Members
Announcements about this Service Project from Rushton.
This service project is designed to remind us that one of the things that connects us is the ability to encourage. That encouragement happens in many ways - telling those fighting cancer that we are thinking about them, and remembering those we've lost in special ways.
So far, we've had nine members and seven friends of the club send messages, or donate, or pledge to join us on the day!
We'd love to add your name to the project, as well!
You can share a message honoring someone you know who is fighting cancer or whom you've lost to cancer. (Send Rushton a sentence or two, and include a picture if you wish.)
You can donate to the American Cancer Society through this link. Funds raised go toward research toward a cure, for educational programs for patients and caregivers, and support for those who provide transportation for patients.
You can join the team on the day of the Santa Clara Relay for Life event. President Nick is also joining the project in San Jose! Our club is supporting by picking up the food restaurants are donating for the evening meal and then by helping clean up at the end of the evening. (Reply to Rushton directly, and he'll get in touch about our plans for that day.)
Rotary Fellowship:
Lisa Akselrad and Terri Schenkel attended the Rotary Club of Niles annual fundraiser. Looks like they had a lot of fun and helped raise money for great projects.
Rushton Hurley and Felix Pretscheck met for the first time in Kyoto Japan while Rushton was visiting.
The Rotary International Convention in Singapore is rapidly approaching. Several eCSV members will be attending. To help everyone arrange a meet-up, Cal & Rushton have requested that any members wanting to get together fill out this form. Let’s Get Together in Singapore.
Coffee With a Rotarian: Be part of our club’s fellowship and reach out to this month’s match for a CWR chat! If you did not receive an email, please let PE Mike know.
Remember, being a Rotarian means more than just being a member, being a Rotarian means you are willing to do Rotary work. Please volunteer! If interested in working on a club committee (Membership, Club Service, Programs, Foundation, Youth Service, Mini-Grants, Budget & Finance) please let President Nick or President-Elect Mike know ASAP!
TRF & Every Rotarian, Every Year (EREY)
It’s not too late. Have you donated to TRF?
Help our club join others in District 5170 to achieve 100% EREY. Only a $25.00 donation (more is welcome if you can) per member will qualify us for the District EREY lottery. The winning clubs will earn extra DDF funds to help us in our efforts to make a better world. Remember, our DDF comes back to us through your TRF giving. Sign up today for your TRF contribution - https://www.siliconvalleyrotary.com/trf
Is your latest information posted on our ClubRunner Members site at: https://portal.clubrunner.ca/8370/Page/ShowHomePage. After logging in, please be sure to access the MyClubRunner tab, and select My Profile. Please update your personal information here, which automatically updates our club directory.
Your Service Hours reporting will now take you directly to your ClubRunner Login and Entry for Volunteer Hours. From this point forward, your Service Hours will report to Rotary from ClubRunner.
TRF and EREY - There’s still time to consider your gift to Rotary for the annual TRF Fund. There are several ways to give: outright payment (Check or Credit Card), monthly payments billed to your credit card, allocation to several funds, etc. Our TRF Chair, Phil Dean has already sent by email your pledge and methods for collecting. Have you returned your pledge? Our Club is striving to be designated as “Every Year, Every Rotarian”. Your gift matters, either a small amount or a large amount (that is up to you - we will never tell you how much to give). A portion of our Annual fundgiving will come back to us for our DDF usage.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK: 15 April
“Volunteers are unpaid not because they are worthless, but because they are priceless.” – Anonymous
District 5170
Read the latest news from District 5170 - https://rotarydistrict5170.org
SERVICE REPORT
Tell us about the service you’ve done recently for the Club or in your community. Also, post here if you attended another Rotary Club meeting this week
Click here to post your Service Hours directly to ClubRunner
SERVICE PROJECT OPPORTUNITIES
For upcoming club projects in District 5170, check out the District 5170 website. Also, if you have some time available for projects, be sure to let your local area Rotary Club know that you are available to volunteer for their upcoming projects.
HAPPY DOLLARS: Do Good by Sharing Something Good
Each week we ask our members to share stories with the club and toss in a few dollars to support our efforts. The primary goal of this section is to provide a fun way of getting to know each fellow members and guests, while giving back to a good cause.
Happy dollars is an opportunity to share something positive that has happened in your life whether it is personal or business. Think of it as your opportunity to brag a little, but also put a little bit into a karma jar. The money donated through happy dollars is put to charitable use.
PROGRAM: Confronting Ethical Challenges in a High Tech World
SPEAKER: Mehran Sahami
Every week we bring you a new program on innovation, entrepreneurship, and education, and how those contribute to service to others.
The Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley seeks to explore perspectives on service from across the world. The views of the speakers in our programs are their own, and unless stated otherwise, are not necessarily reflective of the views of our eClub or Rotary International.
If you have an idea for a cool speaker, please feel free to reach out to them directly or submit THIS FORM so our Program Committee can contact them!
Machine Learning has tremendous potential to help us better understand a variety of domains and build tools for automated decision-making. Such tools carry the promise of more accurate predictions and higher efficiency than might be achievable without them. However, machine learning also has the potential to lead to outcomes that reinforce biases, disproportionately impact particular subpopulations, and violate notions of privacy. In this talk, we examine some of the promises and perils that arise from work in machine learning to understand both the ethical issues and competing value trade-offs at stake.
Our speaker, Mehran Sahami, is the James and Ellenor Chesebrough Professor and Tencent Chair of the Computer Science department at Stanford University. Before joining the Stanford faculty in 2007, he was a Senior Research Scientist at Google. Mehran's research interests include computer science education, machine learning, and ethics. He has published numerous research papers and holds more than 20 patents, including work related to web search, recommendation engines, and email spam filtering that have been deployed in commercial applications.
He served as co-chair of the ACM/IEEE-CS joint task force on Computer Science Curricula 2013 (CS2013), which created curricular guidelines for college programs in Computer Science at an international level. He was appointed by California Governor Jerry Brown to the state's Computer Science Strategic Implementation Plan Advisory Panel. And, he is a co-author with Rob Reich and Jeremy Weinstein of the book " System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot."
Members and guests, please welcome Mehran Sahami!
To learn more about the book System Error, go to:
To learn more about the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley, go to:
Important Announcement - “Weekly Rotarian” Full Meeting Podcasts
Announcing: Our main program speakers are now available as audio podcasts in addition to YouTube videos! Each week they are available on Spotify, Google, and Apple podcasts.
Or you can simply click below for this week’s speaker:
And our original podcast, featuring Some of the best of our previous speakers is still available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts
UPCOMING PROGRAM RECORDING SCHEDULE
All of our guest speakers and programs are recorded live online over Zoom video conference. We welcome members and guests to join us in one of these upcoming recordings. Recordings are approximately 30 minutes long and are subject to change without notice.
Our online video conference room link for these recordings is always http://zoom.siliconvalleyrotary.com/. You are welcome to join us! Please note the timezone listed for all recordings is US Pacific Time (San Francisco, California, USA).
If you can’t join the live recording, please send your questions for an upcoming speaker to programs@siliconvalleyrotary.com.
THE ATTENDANCE SURVEY
Thanks for reading and watching this week’s meeting. You have two last things to do before you’re done.
We have a very short attendance survey below for you to fill out to record your attendance.
Visiting Rotarians, this is how you can get an email receipt to pass along to your club’s secretary as proof that you’ve attended our meeting if you need it for makeup.
Non-Rotarian Guests, we would love to see who is dropping by our meetings! This part is optional for you. If you think you may want to join our eClub at some point in the future, we would strongly recommend you fill out the attendance form as it will improve your chances of success for your membership application.
For all members and guests — we strongly recommend and ask that you leave a comment in our comments area below. Tell us how you enjoyed the program. Ask this week’s speaker any questions you might have. Or just stop by and say hello and tell us where you’re from!
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