Let’s think about something besides the pandemic for a hot second. The future. When your phone will be a mind-reading personal assistant, you’ll know you’re sick before you have any symptoms, and robots will have better dance moves than we do. Oh wait, that’s already happening. Whether this excites or terrifies you, AI is here to stay. And this month, we’re going to talk about why we should all have a say in what that future looks like.
On the face of it, it sounds like a win: AI can do what we do, but better. Like when Gmail knows what you want to write before you do! It’s the do what we do part we need to think twice about. The systems we create and train are a mirror of ourselves. So it’s no surprise that AI internalizes the same biases we have, including, but not limited to: gender and race. This makes the but better part sound more like a but worse.
Imagine what it would be like to have to wear a mask in order to unlock your phone with facial recognition. Crazy!, you say (if you’re a white person). Think again. Computer scientist Joy Buolamwini experienced this firsthand when she discovered that some facial recognition software couldn’t detect her dark-skinned face until she put on a white mask. There are countless examples of higher error rates for recognizing women, especially those with darker skin tones. Why is this? It’s pretty obvious when you think about it: the people building and testing AI do not represent all of us. And the data we use to train AI models does not represent all of us. And women of color are especially underrepresented.
You might thing that facial recognition isn’t a life or death situation, but the consequences of errors and biases are extremely high when these technologies are used for policing and identification of suspects. And this isn’t the only high-stakes situation. Algorithms might attribute heart attack symptoms to depression in women while suggesting an immediate doctor’s visit to a man. That’s not the world that we want to live in! So what can we do? We’re preaching to the choir here, we know, but it’s another reason for more diverse representation in tech and AI! And what about the rest of us non-nerds? Don’t let AI build itself around you - stay in the loop. Be aware of the issues and talk about them.
But I don’t even know what AI is, you might say. We thought of that. And our upcoming webinar is just for you! It’s for the rest of us.
Join us in March for: Machine Learning for the Rest of Us, with Inmar Givoni
March 23, 2020 at 18:00 CET, register on Eventbrite here!
You won’t need a technical background to come out of our March webinar feeling intelligent - and it won’t be artificial (sorry, we couldn’t help ourselves). Inmar Givoni, former Director of Engineering at Uber Advanced Technologies Group (the ride-hailing giant’s self-driving unit), brings us up to speed on machine learning and AI, covering basic concepts, dispelling some of the mystery, and showing what AI can and can’t do for you.
Before Uber ATG’s very recent acquisition by Aurora, Inmar led a team on a mission to bring cutting-edge AI for self-driving vehicles to life. She’s an inventor of several patents, an author, and a speaker. And if that’s not enough, she works actively to encourage young women to choose technical career paths, thereby saving us from the biased machines of the future. Thanks, Inmar!
Don’t miss this talk from one of Forbes Magazine’s Woman in AI to Watch in 2020! And stick around after - we hope she’ll share more gems of wisdom like this one:
It's rare to not suffer from imposter syndrome. So, you are likely not special enough to be that one person who has imposter syndrome AND is an imposter.
Staying in the Loop: The Big Five For Life by John Strelecky
Thanks to our TIER colleague Sophie Wieckowski for the recommendation!
Imagine there’s a photo of every day of your life. All of these photos are exhibited in a museum or a slideshow after your death. Would you be proud of each day or would you realise that you had more sad days than happy ones? With this perspective, it becomes clear how much one's goals in life are related to one's goals at work and how we shouldn’t compromise at work. In The Big Five for Life, John Strelecky uses a well-written story to describe how this is possible - not only from the employee's side, but from the employer's, too, because this goal is in the interest of both.
Whew. Those were some heavy topics: bias coded into our future and the meaning of life. But it’s people like you, dear readers, who keep us going, fighting the fight. It’s all of our responsibility to reform the status quo - and to make sure that AI won’t undo that work.
Right, Siri?
With joy,
Your Women of TIER: Galuh, Sadie, Ligia, and Nastya
P.S. This issue was not written by a robot. We promise.