Re:AI Explorables: big ideas in machine learning, simply exp...
by nerdponx on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @01:22AM
(#27744498)
The so-called "uncomfortable truths" might just be "uncomfortable" for you right now, but if you end up on the wrong statistical end of one of them, your life could be ruined.
There are very, very practical problems here. It's not about nebulously wanting to avoid enforcing stereotypes. It's about avoiding very real and very negative outcomes for unsuspecting and innocent individuals.
It's the same exact reason why "racial profiling" by the police is unequivocally and universally considered unjust and bad, except by racists who like to quote statistics as a kind of pragmatist veneer.
What's worse is that you could end up racially profiling people without even meaning to, either by omission (not enough people who look like X in the data) or by technical limitations (apparently facial recognition algorithms struggle with dark skin even on balanced datasets). There is a lot of very interesting and important work to be done in this area.
There are very, very practical problems here. It's not about nebulously wanting to avoid enforcing stereotypes. It's about avoiding very real and very negative outcomes for unsuspecting and innocent individuals.
It's the same exact reason why "racial profiling" by the police is unequivocally and universally considered unjust and bad, except by racists who like to quote statistics as a kind of pragmatist veneer.
What's worse is that you could end up racially profiling people without even meaning to, either by omission (not enough people who look like X in the data) or by technical limitations (apparently facial recognition algorithms struggle with dark skin even on balanced datasets). There is a lot of very interesting and important work to be done in this area.