technology

Better, Nicer, Clearer, Fairer: a critical assessment of the movement for ethical artificial intelligence and machine learning

I will present this paper in the FATE (fairness, accountability, transparency, ethics) reading group tomorrow (2023-10-25). You can view the slides I’ll use here. There are unresolved tensions in the algorithmic ethics world. Here are two examples: Is inclusion always good? Gebru: “you can’t have ethical A.I. that’s not inclusive… [a]nd whoever is creating the technology is setting the standards” Nelson: “… I struggle to understand why we want to make black communities more cognizant in facial recognition systems that are disproportionately used for surveillance.
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thoughts on technology ownership

Having heard about the terrible privacy policies of car manufacturers and Ford’s new patent to automate vehicle repossession, I was finally able to formulate some thoughts I’ve had brewing for a while about ownership in this world of ubiquitous computing. Before the industrial revolution, humans could essentially understand what a thing did by looking at it, and ownership was about possession of the object. Now we don’t understand our tools, and so possession does not imply control.
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Tools and weapons: the promise and peril of the digital age

I started taking notes later in the book. There were lots of good insights in the first half. Sorry! broadband access permalink Getting the internet to rural communities is a big deal for the rural economy. Just like electricity, it’s something that needs government support because there isn’t the economic incentive for ISPs to reach some of these locations. ethical AI permalink The focus on AI now is not just a fad, but a convergence of several trends that have made AI the next logical step: the increased computational resources, flexible access to compute through the cloud, etc.
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