Kate Crawford’s NY Times article, “Artificial Intelligence’s White Guy Problem,” accurately describes the lack of representation currently being faced within the white male-dominated tech industries of today. These machine systems are being built with questionable ethical standards, creating biased answers as these systems replicate and reproduce the ideas and information they were originally fed, under the guise of advanced intelligence and the creation of these technologically revolutionary systems. An example can be found through the usage of widely used software within the criminal justice system, which is 2x as likely to flag black defendants for the possibility of committing (future) crimes. Automating this kind of derogatory predisposition within the justice system is extremely dangerous. That’s why, as Crawford states, “inclusivity matters — from who designs it to who sits on the company boards and which ethical perspectives are included” (Crawford). The article ends by explaining that for those who “already face marginalization,” the dangers of prejudicial bias are already real, as these systems were simply not built for them or engineered to consider them; thus making the current fear of AI taking over more of a fear for the affluent white men like Bill Gates(who recently did an interview voicing his fear of the extent AI can go).
Sep 30
September 29th Reading Reflections
Ruha Benjamin’s “Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code” has a striking title, playing on the normalization of discriminatory bias within tech. Social coding, or synonymously associating risk or negative values with racially coded names. This is similar to something I refer to as the watermelon crisis of the South. Post-Emancipation, free Black Americans of the South sold watermelon in open market areas, providing themselves with a lucrative way of earning a tax-free income by producing a crop that was relatively easy to grow and in high demand. Upon seeing their success, negative associations or stereotypes like “black people love watermelon” were floated around to hurt the business of these then successful and wealthy black watermelon sellers. In turn, Benjamin’s article highlights the dark evils that racist web programmers can cause by webbing their prejudices into their code, like engineered inequity, default discrimination, and coded exposure.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
1 comment
Great response here and I’m glad the articles resonated with you. Although their findings are pretty dire, I think it’s super important to see these perspectives around any discussions about technology and it’s origins in order to understand how to both relate to it and argue against it’s potential dangers.