181–190 of 308 posts
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Ignorance of your "black box" excuses not
> Ignorance of your "black box" excuses not Hopefully the FTC understands linear separability. Because I often get the impression that people who want ML models to be explicable don’t, and are expecting the mathematically impossible.
“It’s an ambiguous term with many possible definitions.” “Does the product actually use AI at all? If you think you can get away with baseless claims…” Last I checked basic optimization techniques like simulated annealing and gradient descent - as well as a host of basic statistical tools - are standard parts of an introductory AI textbook. I’ve been on the receiving end of government agency enforcement (SEC) and it…
While I don't disagree with the basic premise ("AI" as a specific falsifiable term is hard to pin down due to the ubiquity associated with the term); I do think there are specific cut-and-dry circumstances where the FTC could falsifiably prove your product does not include AI. For example, using an alternative of Amazon's Mechanical Turk to process data is clearly a case where your product does not use AI. Which I be…
If, for example, a company marketed a toaster that "uses AI to toast your bread perfectly", I would expect that language to indicate something more sophisticated than an ordinary mechanical thermostat.
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Suggest you read the link they provided, since they clearly to have legal authority over these topics as defined by US legal code: https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2021/04/aiming-tr...
Can you link me to the text of the FTC Act that backs the claims made in the article that the FTC has authority over unfair consumer "algorithms"? They are quite editorialized. I responded in a sibling comment to someone saying the same thing. The only text I can find in the FTC act is related to unfair business practices with respect to competition against other businesses. Not "biased algorithms".
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In this case they aren't mutually exclusive. A government agency reminding the public it has legal authority to regulate is always threatening.
It's the casual part that is inappropriate. The government should not casually threaten the citizens.
This message is not new. Advertisers should take another look at our earlier AI guidance, which focused on fairness and equity but also said, clearly, not to overpromise what your algorithm or AI-based tool can deliver. Whatever it can or can’t do, AI is important, and so are the claims you make about it. You don’t need a machine to predict what the FTC might do when those claims are unsupported. Really great and omi…
Not ominous, threatening, and somewhat juvenile IMO.
Death. Mass death. Poverty. Disease. Mass destruction. Famine.
Brush away these warnings to move fast and break things if you (Royal you) want. Hopefully, you won’t cause mass suffering, but if you do I hope you’re made an example of.
When the ramifications are great so must be the controls.
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I think we can safely assume techniques with analytical solutions computable in polynomial time are neither ML nor AI. Linear regression is an important part of statistics but is still ultimately a couple matmuls and a matrix inversion in its basic form.
A good amount of what gets into an ML or AI course, or book, is a couple matmuls and inversion.
Bayesian regression is often not really considered AI, unless it's incorporated in a more complicated pipeline (e.g. Bayesian optimization). Same goes for linear regression, then: alone it is just a model.
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You missed the second half of 15 USC § 45.a.1: (1) Unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are hereby declared unlawful. Now, IANAL, but it seems to me that the example the FTC gave about racially biased 'AI' would fall well under the second clause.
Not a lawyer either, but take a look at this one's definition of "in or affecting commerce" under the Business Activities, Sometimes section: http://www.stephenson-law.com/news/“-or-affecting-commerce”-... > The proper inquiry is not whether a contractual relationship existed between the parties, but rather whether the defendant’s allegedly deceptive acts affected commerce. I'm really not sure that "gave different de…
Replace 'product satisfaction' with ARPU and suddenly it could very well be. Charging users different amounts, even if it only appears that it might be racially biased, would be a great way to invite more scrutiny.
Ultimately, I figure the FTC probably has a few lawyers on staff, and they probably ran these messages past at least one of them. So they're probably a little more certain of the soundness of the messages than us armchair lawyers.
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Doesn't this kill AI as a product? Or at least mean that if you're too poor for a doctor or lawyer you can't fall back to the unreliable AI?
Aren't they really only saying you have to disclose it in your claims about the product?
Quantifying your risk does not mean you eliminated all your risk.
We allow the sale of alcohol, tobacco, and firearms too.
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Can you link me to the text of the FTC Act that backs the claims made in the article that the FTC has authority over unfair consumer "algorithms"? They are quite editorialized. I responded in a sibling comment to someone saying the same thing. The only text I can find in the FTC act is related to unfair business practices with respect to competition against other businesses. Not "biased algorithms".
Did you even read “Section 5 of the FTC Act” since to me it’s as simple if you’re willfully ignoring information you already have: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/45
> Unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are hereby declared unlawful.
applies to an "inequitable AI algorithm"? I'm really serious, this section talks about unfair competition between businesses and unfairly or deceptively affecting commerce. Here's a lawyers definition of "in or affecting commerce": http://www.stephenson-law.com/news/“-or-affecting-commerce”-...
Specifically, it's not illegal to make a product that treats people unfairly. But it's illegal to treat people unfairly in commerce. My reading of that is that if I offer my shitbot to you fairly and non-deceptively, and it treats you poorly, that's not the FTCs concern.
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Yeah, it's pretty laughable that the source they link to for those "possible definitions" right away says this: > AI is defined in many ways and often in broad terms. The variations stem in part from whether one sees it as a discipline (e.g., a branch of computer science), a concept (e.g., computers performing tasks in ways that simulate human cognition), a set of infrastructures (e.g., the data and computational pow…
> Deterministic if/then statements This was the pinnacle of AI in the 80's. They called them "expert systems".