Professional Publishers: Is Institutional Racism a Thing?
June 24, 2020
DarkCyber found “AI Researchers Say Scientific Publishers Help Perpetuate Racist Algorithms” somewhat unusual. Blending decades old algorithms with professional publishing strikes me as a combo that will not knock peanut butter and jelly off its popular pairing perch. (Yes, alliteration. Next up, anthropomorphish behavior; that is, projecting human qualities to math.)
The main point is that a paper called “A Deep Neural Network Model to Predict Criminality Using Image Processing” has been left in the stop bath. The write up reports:
Citing the work of leading Black AI scholars, the letter debunks the scientific basis of the paper and asserts that crime-prediction technologies are racist. It also lists three demands: 1) for Springer Nature to rescind its offer to publish the study; 2) for it to issue a statement condemning the use of statistical techniques such as machine learning to predict criminality and acknowledging its role in incentivizing such research; and 3) for all scientific publishers to commit to not publishing similar papers in the future. The letter, which was sent to Springer Nature on Monday, was originally written by five researchers at MIT, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, McGill University, and the AI Now Institute. In a matter of days, it gained more than 600 signatures and counting across the AI ethics and academic communities, including from leading figures like Meredith Whittaker, cofounder of the AI Now Institute, and Ethan Zuckerman, former director of the Center for Civic Media at the MIT Media Lab.
Just to sharpen the pencil point. Humans select algorithms and data sets. Humans determine the order of calculation, specify recursions, and cook up thresholds. The algorithms themselves are not, by definition, racist.
Nevertheless, professional publishers now have to figure out a way to explain what’s what. The exercise will probably steal time from the firm’s efforts to get authors to pay for inclusions and corrections. Also, wheedling experts to perform “free” editorial reviews for the good of the community may lose some momentum as well.
Didn’t that bronze in that statue know it was formulating a statement about a certain historical event?
Bronze and professional publishers should know better.
Stephen E Arnold, June 24, 2020
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