6 ms·

You argued that AI was biased. Now you're arguing that AI is too truthful, and that AIs uttering the truth would feed into a small minority's preexisting bias.

by DaUR 10y ago

You argued that AI was biased. Now you're arguing that AI is too truthful, and that AIs uttering the truth would feed into a small minority's preexisting bias. This just proves my point that AIs are already less biased than humans as is. You also seem to argue for blank slate dogma (that every group difference is caused by unfair government policy or societal "bias") and that provable facts must be silenced unless accompanied by their detailed etiology (which cannot be scientifically or factually verified, and therefore really just serves social purposes). I would argue that we should teach meditation in schools, every day, and that society should be more empathic and less judgmental. It should also be less afraid of truth, and less politically biased. I'm arguing that none of the problems you bring up would be a problem with sufficiently advanced AI. They would move us towards the truth, not away from it. Journalism's current credibility crisis stems solely from its attempts to be "socially useful" rather than truthful. I'm not sure why we should make AI copy us (again ironic since you're against AI taking on human biases).

vertex-four 10y ago
No, I'm arguing that the definition of "bias" is incredibly varied and that being "truthful" but failing to tell the whole story (either because it's unknown, or as an editorial choice as to which data to present, or whatever else) can in itself be a form of bias. Most bias isn't in the form of creating outright lies - it's picking and choosing what data to present. And if your solution is to not pick and choose what data to present, the output of your AI would be a life's work to study.
- DaUR 10y ago
  AI would allow us to form much more accurate etiologies than the current crop of sociologists, and better recommendations for solutions. There are simply no downsides to AI-journalism. The more you understand the present, the more accurately you can predict the future. Big data increases your knowledge of the present, allowing you to understand what-causes-what much more precisely.
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    The issue is that you can't distill all the world's knowledge on a subject into something that can be read in an afternoon. Or rather, you can - so long as you choose to Trust In The Machine and ignore the details of how it got from there to the finished article. (I'm still entirely unconvinced that an AI could ever avoid bias, given that we're arguing over precisely what bias is in the first place.) That might work for Wal-mart deciding how much Kraft cheese to buy, but it shouldn't be acceptable for anything influencing public policy.
    - DaUR 10y ago
      As opposed to trusting biased, rushed, financially-motivated humans of average human intelligence to distill the world's knowledge? Or biased, rushed, career-driven sociologists, that live under publish-or-perish and don't use the scientific method? Why the hell is it acceptable to have political activists and ideologues influence public policy? Again, that isn't the point. AI would be a step forward, and I'd gladly take journalists becoming unemployed if it causes a new AI-led era of Enlightenment. You're missing the vision: AI, with its swathes of data, would be able to tell you precisely what percentage of blacks that have been put in prison over drug laws would never have committed violent crimes. People's perception that these laws are justified for "public safety" would recede. That's just an example. You're arguing from a fundamentally obscurantist point of view, arguing that unless we know 100% of the facts, it's better to keep certain things quiet to prevent human bias, whereas you should be arguing that we'll never know 100% of the facts (obviously) and should just stop being so quick to judge. More facts are always better than less facts, period.
      - vertex-four 10y ago
        > As opposed to trusting biased, rushed, financially-motivated humans of average human intelligence to distill the world's knowledge? Or biased, rushed, career-driven sociologists, that live under publish-or-perish and don't use the scientific method? Why the hell is it acceptable to have political activists and ideologues influence public policy? Because we can discuss what bias these people have, and there is a "marketplace of ideas" so to speak. We're not asserting that there is one potential truth based on what a machine says.

by DaUR 10y ago

vertex-four 10y ago

No, I'm arguing that the definition of "bias" is incredibly varied and that being "truthful" but failing to tell the whole story (either because it's unknown, or as an editorial choice as to which data to present, or whatever else) can in itself be a form of bias. Most bias isn't in the form of creating outright lies - it's picking and choosing what data to present. And if your solution is to not pick and choose what data to present, the output of your AI would be a life's work to study.

DaUR 10y ago
AI would allow us to form much more accurate etiologies than the current crop of sociologists, and better recommendations for solutions. There are simply no downsides to AI-journalism. The more you understand the present, the more accurately you can predict the future. Big data increases your knowledge of the present, allowing you to understand what-causes-what much more precisely.
- vertex-four 10y ago
  The issue is that you can't distill all the world's knowledge on a subject into something that can be read in an afternoon. Or rather, you can - so long as you choose to Trust In The Machine and ignore the details of how it got from there to the finished article. (I'm still entirely unconvinced that an AI could ever avoid bias, given that we're arguing over precisely what bias is in the first place.) That might work for Wal-mart deciding how much Kraft cheese to buy, but it shouldn't be acceptable for anything influencing public policy.
  - DaUR 10y ago
    As opposed to trusting biased, rushed, financially-motivated humans of average human intelligence to distill the world's knowledge? Or biased, rushed, career-driven sociologists, that live under publish-or-perish and don't use the scientific method? Why the hell is it acceptable to have political activists and ideologues influence public policy? Again, that isn't the point. AI would be a step forward, and I'd gladly take journalists becoming unemployed if it causes a new AI-led era of Enlightenment. You're missing the vision: AI, with its swathes of data, would be able to tell you precisely what percentage of blacks that have been put in prison over drug laws would never have committed violent crimes. People's perception that these laws are justified for "public safety" would recede. That's just an example. You're arguing from a fundamentally obscurantist point of view, arguing that unless we know 100% of the facts, it's better to keep certain things quiet to prevent human bias, whereas you should be arguing that we'll never know 100% of the facts (obviously) and should just stop being so quick to judge. More facts are always better than less facts, period.
    - vertex-four 10y ago
      > As opposed to trusting biased, rushed, financially-motivated humans of average human intelligence to distill the world's knowledge? Or biased, rushed, career-driven sociologists, that live under publish-or-perish and don't use the scientific method? Why the hell is it acceptable to have political activists and ideologues influence public policy? Because we can discuss what bias these people have, and there is a "marketplace of ideas" so to speak. We're not asserting that there is one potential truth based on what a machine says.