Smart Software: Biases Are Encoded
March 16, 2020
Big Think published “Busting the Myth of Neutral AI”. There’s an annoying autorun version of the story but – thank heaven for small favors – there is a transcript of the lecture.
The main points, despite the wonky packaging, are semi-important; for example:
- “Technology can really amplify biases because we create technologies based on who we are.” The amplification point is related to the reactions caused by social networks or the feedback loops set up in YouTube recommendations
- Bias is part of the territory: “technologies built upon biases are learning from data sets that are out there and they’re learning from an unequal world. Because our world, we still have to try to perfect our union. We have to think about artificial intelligence in aspirational ways rather than this myth that it’s somehow neutral or scientific or it’s just technology.”
- People are clueless with regard to smart software and its ubiquity: “…All the time we’re interacting with AI systems it’s not disclosed to us; we don’t know what those systems know about us, we don’t know what are the values that guide their decisions, we don’t know how that might shape our lives, we don’t know what alternatives we might provide. All of that is a black box and all of that should be opened up.”
Useful observations.
Stephen E Arnold, March 16, 2020
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