5 ms·

This list presents an incredibly pessimistic and alarmist view on these technologies, assuming only worst case abuses. And I don't know what solutions are advoc

This list presents an incredibly pessimistic and alarmist view on these technologies, assuming only worst case abuses. And I don't know what solutions are advocated, so it feels like it is just against these technologies in general. And it is not fair to blame these mostly helpful tools for the awful things some people may use them for. For example, they consider deep fakes in general to be awful, because of the potential for abuse. Should we just throw out deep fakes? Should we perhaps restrict their usage to licensed parties? They also list Tay the chat bot as being awful because some trolls temporally hijacked it and got it to repeat back some racist stuff for a few weeks before it was re-calibrated. What does the author suggest? That Microsoft should never have made Tay public until they could 100% guarantee that no trolls would ever abuse it, even for a little bit? Gender inference tools are written off as discrimination, because they could be used to discriminate against people. But they could just as well be used against AGAINST discrimination, by helping detect and document systemic discrimination. I think especially tools for analyzing populations present incredible benefits to help people, more so than potentials for abuse. AI that can be used to detect genetic disease can save countless lives and reduce suffering. But it is bad because potential employers could maybe abuse it?? And a lot of these awful policies don't use the AI directly, they merely use the AI as a justification for what they were going to do already anyway. Indeed, you could go back 50 years and find "AI" being used to justify problematic policies. I'm sure that Oil executives, criminal justice lobbyists, and climate change deniers have all been able to algorithm based evidence for their agendas. Don't blame the algorithms, blame the people.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
RossBencina 6y ago
Your claim of "mostly helpful tools" was not backed up with facts or even an attempt at explanation.
- apostacy 6y ago
  I thought my comment was pretty clear. Most of the tools for trying to extract information about people by how they write is helpful. An example from the list is "Gender Detection from Names" under the "Discrimination" heading. And then I gave several examples and an explanation. But to reiterate, tools that help us increase our understand of society are helpful, and can be used for good. The list assumes that a tool that can help discern someone's gender will and can only be used to treat someone unfairly. But a researcher could just as well use exactly the same tools to analyze the gender composition of a set of people, for the purposes of advocating for them. FOR EXAMPLE, in this repo: https://github.com/waterdatacollaborative/Get-the-Lead-Out https://github.com/waterdatacollaborative/Get-the-Lead-Out What if a researcher were to use data mining tools to find out more information about the children most impacted by lead in the water, for the purposes of helping them. (And some have) Is that an "awful" use of AI? I would assert that actually yes some of these tools are quite helpful.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

RossBencina 6y ago

Your claim of "mostly helpful tools" was not backed up with facts or even an attempt at explanation.

apostacy 6y ago
I thought my comment was pretty clear. Most of the tools for trying to extract information about people by how they write is helpful. An example from the list is "Gender Detection from Names" under the "Discrimination" heading. And then I gave several examples and an explanation. But to reiterate, tools that help us increase our understand of society are helpful, and can be used for good. The list assumes that a tool that can help discern someone's gender will and can only be used to treat someone unfairly. But a researcher could just as well use exactly the same tools to analyze the gender composition of a set of people, for the purposes of advocating for them. FOR EXAMPLE, in this repo: https://github.com/waterdatacollaborative/Get-the-Lead-Out https://github.com/waterdatacollaborative/Get-the-Lead-Out What if a researcher were to use data mining tools to find out more information about the children most impacted by lead in the water, for the purposes of helping them. (And some have) Is that an "awful" use of AI? I would assert that actually yes some of these tools are quite helpful.