Hi all!
Sorry for the delay- I had a super jam packed weekend and now upcoming week.
A few points- thank you for the feedback! In general, I love feedback and criticism and I definitely got it :) Two, didn't realize this was a *wiki only* related research channel, so I'll try to bear that in mind in the future when sharing things I am writing or have written.
But thirdly and lastly, this is not an academic article. This is an article published in design magazine about research related to ethics within product design, specifically products using utilizing machine learning and artificial intelligence. Though, I would love to write an academic paper on ethics of design utilizing machine learning *in* product design. If that sounds interesting to any of you, please get at me. I love to collaborate.
So- the tone of voice is *quite* snarky but I stand by it, again because this was written for Fast Company. I have much more academic writing, if you are interested in reading that, but it is on online harassment and automation. This article is designed to be a primer of information for product designers who may have heard Elon focusing on the dangers of AI. There are plenty of things to worry about in the future of AI, like the integration of artificial intelligence into the military or drones, for example. But publicly, there are no cases of that. There is, publicly, a variety of investigations done by ProPublica, which I link to in my article, about predictive policing and it's racial bias. The article itself is designed to be *approachable* for all readers, *especially non technical readers*. And this piece, in it's tone which I stand by, was designed to jokingly respond to Musk's hyperbolic freak out.
This is, instead, an article designed for lay people, and everyday designers, to think about what are the current issues with AI, examples of current issues with implicit bias in machine learning products right now, and other articles and videos to watch. What this is is a class syllabus wrapped in a layer of a very genial tone so everyday designers have something to chew on and some real information to grasp.
There aren't a lot of resources for everyday designers out there. There are not a lot of resources for start ups, product managers, designers, front end developers, etc on what is out there in this new and emerging field of artificial intelligence and how it exists currently within products already out in the world. Truth be told, this is an article I wrote for my old coworkers at IBM Watson Design- on why having a real conversation about ethically how you should design, ethically how you should build products using machine learning and what questions you should ask about what you are building and why. I saw and had *very few* of those conversations. I am writing for *those plumbers* who are out there making things right now, and have bad leadership and bad guidance, but are generally excited about product design and the future of AI, and they also have to ship their products now. Because, I am, also, a plumber. What I am doing *right now* at the Wikimedia Foundation is the fantastically weird but unsexy of job of designing tools and UI to mitigate online harassment while studying on wiki-harassment. It's not just research but a design schedule of rolling out tools quickly for the community to mitigate the onslaught of a lot of very real problems that are happening as we speak. I love it, I love the research that I'm doing because it's about the present and the future. Plumbing is important, it's how we all avoid cholera. Future city planning is important, it's how larger society functions together. Both are important.
I think we're really lucky to work where we all work and to be a part of this community. We get to question, openly and transparently, we get to solicit feedback, and we get to work on very meaningful software. Not every technologist or researcher is as lucky as we are. And those are the technologists I am most keen to talk to- what does it mean to fold in a technology that you don't understand very well, how do you design and utilize design thinking to make *something right now* and how do you do that without recreating a surveillance tool? It's really hard if you don't understand how to think about the threat model of your product, of what you intend to make and how it can be used to harm. There are so few primers for designers that exist on thinking about products from an ethical standpoint, and a standpoint of implicit bias. All of which are such important things to talk about when you are building products that use algorithms, and data, and the algorithm + the data really will determine what your product does more so than the design intends.
But you all know this already, it's lot's of other people that don't :)
Best, Caroline
Ps. the briefest, tiniest of FYIs, in online harassment and security, plumbers have a *hyper specific* connotation to them https://hypatia.ca/2016/06/21/no-more-rock-stars/.
On Mon, Aug 28, 2017 at 2:17 PM, Aaron Halfaker aaron.halfaker@gmail.com wrote:
OK ok. There's some hyperbole in this article and we are the type of people bent on citations and support. This isn't a research publication and Caroline admits in the beginning that she's going to get into a bit of a lecturing tone.
But honestly I liked the article. It makes a good point and pushes a sentiment that I share. Hearing about killer robots turning on humanity is sort of like hearing someone tell you that they are worried about global warming on Mars for future civilizations there when we ought to be more alarmed and focused on the coastal cities on Earth right now. We have so many pressing issues with AIs that are affecting people right now that the future focused alarm is, well, a bit alarmist! Honestly, I think that's the side of AI that lay people understand while the nuanced issues present in the AIs alive today are poorly understood and desperately in need of regulation
I don't think that the people who ought to worry about AIs current problems are "plumbers". They are you. They are me. They are Elon Musk. Identifying and dealing with the structural inequalities that AIs create today is state-of-the-art work. If we knew how to do it, we'd be done already. If you disagree, please show me where I can go get a tradeschool degree that will tell me what to do and negate the need for my research agenda.
-Aaron
On Mon, Aug 28, 2017 at 1:58 AM, Robert West west@cs.stanford.edu wrote:
Hi Caroline,
The premise of this article seems to be that everyone needs to solve
either
the immediate or the distant problems. No one (and certainly not Elon
Musk)
would argue that there are no immediate problems with AI, but why should that keep us from thinking ahead?
In a company, too, you have plumbers who fix the bathrooms today and strategists who plan business 20 years ahead. We need both. If the
plumbers
didn't worry about the immediate problems, the strategists couldn't do their jobs. If the strategists didn't worry about the distant problems,
the
plumbers might not have jobs down the road.
Also, your argument stands on sandy ground from paragraph one, where you claim that AI will never threaten humanity, without giving the inkling of an argument.
Bob
On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 6:50 PM, Caroline Sinders <
csinders@wikimedia.org>
wrote:
hi all, i just started a column with fast co and wrote an article about elon
musk's
AI panic.
https://www.fastcodesign.com/90137818/dear-elon-forget- killer-robots-heres-what-you-should-really-worry-about
would love some feedback :)
best, caroline _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l