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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Absolutely Right About Racist Algorithms

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Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Absolutely Right About Racist Algorithms

#231

Post by yourbandsucks »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #221
50656E6973 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equality of outcome seems like a mechanistic concept of the industrial age of standardized mass production. Equality of opportunity seems much more organic/humanistic because it allows for the natural variation in people's values and personality

I am also interested in equality of opportunity- but how do I measure that everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve something? How do I measure the opportunity to consume nutritious food? The opportunity for access to the same healthcare?

It goes deeper than that if you go into cultural biases prevalent in poor (regardless of race) communities. Cigarettes, scratch-offs, crappy food.. what counts as opportunity?

Is being raised a certain way tantamount to having 'less opportunity' to make better micro-decisions?

Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Absolutely Right About Racist Algorithms

#232

Post by [deleted] »

maceurt wrote: post #78
jpmcglone wrote: post #59

It’s more clear to me than ever now that the left and the right do not use the word “racist” the same way. The left thinks of racism in terms of outcome and the right thinks of racism in terms of intent. We could benefit from better language around these concepts, and honest dialogue about them too.

What I get from people on the left is that an unequal outcome is indicative of racism, however subtle that racism is. The only other explanations for an unequal outcome are biological differences between races (do not want to get into that) and races haves advantages over others from past history.

[deleted]

Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Absolutely Right About Racist Algorithms

#233

Post by cbsmith »

adiian wrote: post #23

I'm trying not to biased, but can't stop to notice sometimes math seems to be biased when you don't like the result: Saavedra had repeatedly complained about supposed bias in social media algorithms, including tweeting that “tech companies tend to be liberal & something is off with their algorithms because they won’t show a lot of content I find by manual search.”

That's not really a case of being biased when you don't like the result though.

That's a case of likely having a different bias than the people tuning the algorithm, and that happens all the time. You're sense of what is "correct" or "the gold set" is skewed by your own bias, and not everyone has the same bias. It's literally impossible to create results that everyone will find unbiased... and not surprisingly, the results companies end up going with are the ones that seem least biased to the people who work there.

Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Absolutely Right About Racist Algorithms

#234

Post by adlkjnndnnd »

hannasanarion wrote: post #198
adlkjnndnnd wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does her tweet really imply any knowledge of it? Maybe she just read in the newspaper about the Google face recognition labeling a black woman as a gorilla?

Are you saying that face recognition calling black people gorillas is a good thing that we should all be unconcerned about?

What makes you think that? No, of course not. I'm just saying having read that gorilla story doesn't imply any degree of technical understanding.

Also, I have to say I considered it hyperbole to be outraged about the Gorilla. It seems pretty obvious that it was just a mistake with the data, not intentional. It is a good warning for things to watch out for, but there wasn't really anything racist about it.

Iirc there are even physical reasons why it is more difficult to identify black faces than white faces. Is that then racist, if an algorithm struggles more with identifying black faces?

Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Absolutely Right About Racist Algorithms

#235

Post by toasterlovin »

jpmcglone wrote: post #59

It’s more clear to me than ever now that the left and the right do not use the word “racist” the same way. The left thinks of racism in terms of outcome and the right thinks of racism in terms of intent. We could benefit from better language around these concepts, and honest dialogue about them too.

The left also thinks of racism in terms of intent. But they think that outcome implies intent. That is the real difference, IMO.

Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Absolutely Right About Racist Algorithms

#236

Post by jgord »

kauffj wrote: post #11

There is no design of AI that can be simultaneously utilitarian, procedurally fair, and representatively fair. I'm going to repeat this again, since many people struggle with this. It is _literally impossible_ to achieve the best utilitarian outcome, the most procedurally fair outcome, and a representatively fair outcome. Anyone designing algorithms will have to make tradeoffs along this frontier. For a far better ar…

yes, and yet "perfect is the enemy of good" ...

I think the article encompasses your objections, to paraphrase : "algorithms can never be perfectly 'fair', because logic itself can never be perfectly fair"

Can we even define 'fair', perhaps we just know unfair when we see it. We seem to be seeing more of it - poverty, homelessness, racism, fact/science-denial, gerrymandering, police violence, gun violence, etc.

Yet, we should still strive for fairness.

There is a lot of ground between where we are now and 'perfect' - and this is AOCs point, essentially - our system of [self?]-rule is palpably unfair for most people, yet we are busily encoding more of that unfairness into algorithms with little oversight.

AOC [ and Bernie, and others ] want us to seek a better implementation of society, and encode that in our algorithms and laws - fairer voting laws, fairer district maps, fairer pay, fairer penalties. Or the converse - encode more fairness, as a means to realize it.

For example, it may be a hard math problem to design optimally fair district boundaries, but its noncontroversial to suggest we can reduce gerrymandering significantly.

One problem seems to be that most people equate socialism with communism [ 'evil' ], when in fact you are always picking from mix of Democracy, Capitalism, Socialism, Oligarchy etc. After Bernies campaign, and a couple years into the Trump experiment, people are now starting to listen to these old but useful ideas.

Ultimately if we don't share any wealth with the poor we will have a bloody revolution, and if we don't reduce Carbon emissions then no wall will keep out the displaced millions of climate refugees.

A bit more Socialism in our Capitalist/Democratic/Oligarchic/Socialist mix, is sorely needed right about now.

Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Absolutely Right About Racist Algorithms

#237

Post by hannasanarion »

adlkjnndnnd wrote: post #234
hannasanarion wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that face recognition calling black people gorillas is a good thing that we should all be unconcerned about?

What makes you think that? No, of course not. I'm just saying having read that gorilla story doesn't imply any degree of technical understanding. Also, I have to say I considered it hyperbole to be outraged about the Gorilla. It seems pretty obvious that it was just a mistake with the data, not intentional. It is a good warning for things to watch out for, but there wasn't really anything racist about it. Iirc there…

>I'm just saying having read that gorilla story doesn't imply any degree of technical understanding.

Is great technical understanding required before one can evaluate whether a program that labels black people as gorillas is functioning appropriately?

>Iirc there are even physical reasons why it is more difficult to identify black faces than white faces. Is that then racist, if an algorithm struggles more with identifying black faces?

So you're saying that black people are innately similar to gorillas, and an algorithm can't be blamed for failing to distinguish them? -

If you're trotting out that grand old "black people all look the same" thing, then yep, that's racist too. Black people tend to have different points of variation in facial features (jaw, chin, ear, and brow shape instead of eye and lip shape and color for white people). Inability to differentiate one face from another means not tracking the correct identifying features, which means racist algorithmic design.

Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Absolutely Right About Racist Algorithms

#239

Post by paganel »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #26

Ok. Lets assume this is true. (Note: I'm biased in that I accept this as true) So, as someone who has possibly implemented racist/sexist/ageist algorithms, how do I: 1. Detect if I'm running a said algorithm (whats the % racism/sexism/ageism I can do before bad?) 2. Run an open dataset to detect said problems 3. Prevent overfit with the proposed dataset from #2 4. Correct said algorithm to reduce bias What's my way f…

> What's my way forward here? How do I do my part and take part in the solution?

Maybe not the answer you wanted, but the best solution would be to let go of implementing AI algorithms altogether. The second best thing that we can do is to try and sabotage/sap the system from the inside (by "we" I mean us, the programmers and the data people involved in implementing these algorithms). You cannot "correct" a system like this using feedback loops and the like, because the system would over-correct and would follow new paths we didn't even thought had been possible. And yes, I'm a hard determinist [1] and proud to be one:

> Hard determinists would view technology as developing independent from social concerns. They would say that technology creates a set of powerful forces acting to regulate our social activity and its meaning. According to this view of determinism we organize ourselves to meet the needs of technology and the outcome of this organization is beyond our control or we do not have the freedom to make a choice regarding the outcome (autonomous technology)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_determinism#Hard...

Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Absolutely Right About Racist Algorithms

#240

Post by toasterlovin »

hannasanarion wrote: post #210
tomp wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your argument is that Harvard is racist if it doesn’t discriminate against Asian applicants? So that they are not overrepresented among the student population?!

No, my argument is that "it's just numbers! they don't have a soul!" is not a valid defense from accusations of racism, because the statistical systems can be racist in their design, and there is no "racist meter" you can apply to check. The only way to know if a system is fair or not is to check whether the results you're getting are the ones you want.

FWIW, your usage of the the term 'racism' is not at all what most people mean when they use the term. The vast, overwhelming majority of people do not think in terms of systems. They think in terms of agency.
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