Algorithms Learn Our Workplace Biases. Can They Help Us Unlearn Them?

2020/03/13 Leave a comment

“The nudge doesn’t focus on changing minds. It focuses on the system.”

— Iris Bohnet, a behavioral economist and professor at the Harvard Kennedy School

In 2014, engineers at Amazon began work on an artificially intelligent hiring tool they hoped would change hiring for good — and for the better. The tool would bypass the messy biases and errors of human hiring managers by reviewing résumé data, ranking applicants and identifying top talent.

Instead, the machine simply learned to make the kind of mistakesits creators wanted to avoid.

The tool’s algorithm was trained on data from Amazon’s hires over the prior decade — and since most of the hires had been men, the machine learned that men were preferable. It prioritized aggressive language like “execute,” which men use in their CVs more often than women, and downgraded the names of all-women’s colleges. (The specific schools have never been made public.) It didn’t choose better candidates; it just detected and absorbed human biases in hiring decisions with alarming speed. Amazon quietly scrapped the project.

Amazon’s hiring tool is a good example of how artificial intelligence — in the workplace or anywhere else — is only as smart as the input it gets. If sexism or other biases are present in the data, machines will learn and replicate them on a faster, bigger scale than humans could do alone.

On the flip side, if A.I. can identify the subtle decisions that end up excluding people from employment, it can also spot those that lead to more diverse and inclusive workplaces.

Humu Inc., a start-up based in Mountain View, Calif., is betting that, with the help of intelligent machines, humans can be nudged to make choices that make workplaces fairer for everyone, and make all workers happier as a result.

A nudge, as popularized by Richard Thayer, a Nobel-winning behavioral economist, and Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor, is a subtle design choice that changes people’s behavior in a predictable way, without taking away their right to choose.

Laszlo Bock, one of Humu’s three founders and Google’s former H.R. chief, was an enthusiastic nudge advocate at Google, where behavioral economics — essentially, the study of the social, psychological and cultural factors that influence people’s economic choices — informed much of daily life.

Nudges showed up everywhere, like in the promotions process (women were more likely to self-promote after a companywide email pointed out a dearth of female nominees) and in healthy-eating initiatives in the company’s cafeterias (placing a snack table 17 feet away from a coffee machine instead of 6.5 feet, it turns out, reduces coffee-break snacking by 23 percent for men and 17 percent for women).

Humu uses artificial intelligence to analyze its clients’ employee satisfaction, company culture, demographics, turnover and other factors, while its signature product, the “nudge engine,” sends personalized emails to employees suggesting small behavioral changes (those are the nudges) that address identified problems.

One key focus of the nudge engine is diversity and inclusion. Employees at inclusive organizations tend to be more engaged. Engaged employees are happier, and happier employees are more productive and a lot more likely to stay.

With Humu, if data shows that employees aren’t satisfied with an organization’s inclusivity, for example, the engine might prompt a manager to solicit the input of a quieter colleague, while nudging a lower-level employee to speak up during a meeting. The emails are tailored to their recipients, but are coordinated so that the entire organization is gently guided toward the same goal.

Unlike Amazon’s hiring algorithm, the nudge engine isn’t supposed to replace human decision-making. It just suggests alternatives, often so subtly that employees don’t even realize they’re changing their behavior.

Jessie Wisdom, another Humu founder and former Google staff member who has a doctorate in behavioral decision research, said sometimes she would hear from people saying, “Oh, this is obvious, you didn’t need to tell me that.”

Even when people may not feel the nudges are helping them, she said, data would show “that things have gotten better. It’s interesting to see how people perceive what is actually useful, and what the data actually bears out.”

In part that’s because the nudge “doesn’t focus on changing minds,” said Iris Bohnet, a behavioral economist and professor at the Harvard Kennedy School. “It focuses on the system.” The behavior is what matters, and the outcome is the same regardless of the reason people give themselves for doing the behavior in the first place.

Of course, the very idea of shaping behavior at work is tricky, because workplace behaviors can be perceived differently based on who is doing them.

Take, for example, the suggestion that one should speak up in a meeting. Research from Victoria Brescoll at the Yale School of Management found that people rated male executives who spoke up often in meetings as more competent than peers; the inverse was true for female executives. At the same time, research from Robert Livingston at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management found that for black American executives, the penalties were reversed: Black female leaders were not penalizedfor assertive workplace behaviors, but black male executives were.

An algorithm that generates one-size-fits-all fixes isn’t helpful. One that takes into account the nuanced web of relationships and factors in workplace success, on the other hand, could be very useful.

So how do you keep an intelligent machine from absorbing human biases? Humu won’t divulge any specifics — that’s “our secret sauce,” Wisdom said.

It’s also the challenge of any organization attempting to nudge itself, bit by bit, toward something that looks like equity.

Source: In the ‘In Her Words’ NewsletterAlgorithms learn our workplace biases. Can they help us unlearn them?

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Indian politics front and centre in Ontario as legislature debates law declaring Sikh genocide

2020/03/13 Leave a comment

Diaspora politics at its worst (the Ford government also changed the requirement for Canadian Sikhs to wear helmets given similar pressures).

Concordia Professor Frank Chalk’s comments at the end position the issue correctly:

The emotionally fraught politics of India are poised to again engulf the Ontario legislature, as opposing Indo-Canadian factions pressure lawmakers over a contentious private member’s bill commemorating a 36-year-old massacre.

The legislation to create a “Sikh genocide week,” introduced by the MPP brother of federal New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh, marks riots in 1984 that saw thousands of Sikhs killed in New Delhi and elsewhere in India.

The killings, encouraged by leaders of the then-ruling Congress Party, remain a festering wound for many Sikh-Canadians. But the terminology in the bill is a red flag for Delhi, and a previous Ontario motion that called the attacks genocide helped raise tensions between Canada and India.

Allies of the current Indian administration — itself under fire for persecution of another minority group, India’s Muslims — were expected to show up in force at Queen’s Park Thursday to voice their opposition to the bill.

Sikh organizations have been working behind the scenes to rally Ontario’s governing Conservative party to back the legislation, adding to expected votes from the NDP and Liberals. One source said more than 40 Tory members pledged their backing this week, anxious not to alienate the powerful Sikh voting bloc in the suburbs west of Toronto.

With that amount of Conservative support, the bill would easily pass second reading in the 124-seat house, a rarity among private-member’s initiatives.

Ivana Yelich, Premier Doug Ford’s press secretary, said Wednesday only that the government is “reviewing” the legislation, and could not reveal what was said about it at a Tory caucus meeting Monday.

Meanwhile, a leading academic expert on genocide said Wednesday the 1984 attacks, as horrific as they were, simply did not meet the internationally accepted definition of the term.

New Democrat Gurratan Singh, who introduced the bill last month, could not be reached for comment. But as he unveiled the legislation, he said the Sikh community’s cries for justice over the event have gone unheeded.

“The trauma of this genocide is real and still impacts Sikhs that call Ontario home,” said Singh. This bill will create a time to allow for reflection and help begin the process of healing for thousands of Sikhs (who) continue to suffer.”

But Anil Shah of the pro-New Delhi Canada India Foundation said the killings were reprehensible acts of revenge, not government-perpetrated genocide. Suggesting otherwise will further anger the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who already believes the federal Liberal government favours the Sikh independence movement. He pointed to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s ill-fated trip to India, where Modi largely gave him the cold shoulder.

“There are going to be repercussions” if the bill passes, Shah predicted. “At this point, we should talk about building relations with this country, we should talk about the trade. Something that happened 35, 36 years ago … that has no relevance.”

After two Sikh bodyguards murdered prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1984, a wave of pogroms saw at least 3,000 Sikhs slaughtered by rampaging Hindus, encouraged at times by prominent Congress officials.

The Ontario legislature passed a motion in 2017 at the instigation of a Liberal member describing the events as a genocide. The Indian government at the time called the motion “misguided,” and a misunderstanding of India’s history and legal system. It added to a perception in New Delhi that Liberals federally and in Ontario favoured the Khalistani or Sikh separatist movement and helped put a chill on relations.

But is there, in fact, merit to declaring the vicious pogroms of 1984 as something akin to the Holocaust or the Rwandan massacre?

As it turns out, there is United Nations genocide convention that defines the term, and what happened to the Sikhs, while likely a crime against humanity, does not meet that definition, says Frank Chalk, a Concordia University history professor and past president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.

While the  victims were clearly targeted because of their religion, the killings were not part of a “long-term, sustained and systematic” effort, perpetrated by government, to wipe out the Sikhs, which is how genocide is described in the UN convention, he said.

“I have enormous sympathy for the Sikh community and the crimes inflicted on the Sikh people in India after Gandhi was assassinated,” Chalk said. “But I fail to sympathize with the priority that some leaders of the community in Canada — not all — give to labeling their suffering and victimization as genocide. I know that gets more media attention … so it’s understandable from the point of view of communications and public relations.”

Source: Indian politics front and centre in Ontario as legislature debates law declaring Sikh genocide

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The U.K. Needs Immigrants To Work In Its Health Service. The Chancellor Just Gave Them A Reason Not To Come.

2020/03/13 1 Comment

Self-defeating move, it would appear:

Immigrants to the U.K. will have to pay more into the National Health Service, whether or not they use its services. By making it more expensive for migrants to come and work, this surcharge may in fact disincentivize the very workers the health service needs at a time of intense labor shortages.

Conservative Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced the increase while presenting his first budget to the U.K. House of Commons. Immigrants coming to the U.K. with a visa to work or join family for more than six months will now have to pay, alongside other fees, a surcharge of £624 for every year of their visa, an increase of more than 50% from where it was at £400, which was itself an increase from £200 in late 2018 (under the new system children will be charged a little less than adults, £470 per year). The funds from the surcharge go into the country’s National Health Service, or NHS.

The stated aim of the surcharge is to prevent migrants from burdening the NHS, as the Chancellor made clear in his speech to the commons: “Migrants benefit from our NHS. And we all want them to do so, but it’s right that what people get out, they also put in. There is a surcharge already, but it doesn’t properly reflect the benefits people receive.”

The specific amount of £624 appears linked to previous claims made by the Conservative party that migrants incur costs to the NHS of around £625 per year. The Guardian fact-checked this claim in 2019, and absent any source for the number, declared it unverifiable.

Nonetheless, the perception that migrants burden the NHS is a common one in post-Brexit Britain, with plenty of anecdotal stories of over-full waiting rooms and months-long waiting times. But research into the economic contributions of immigrants to the U.K., particularly those from the European Union (who will soon be subject to the NHS surcharge), suggests they are not the burden people think they are. A comprehensive review of EU immigrants’ contribution to the country’s public finances commissioned by the government in 2018 found that on average those migrants paid more into, and took less out of, the public purse than native Britons.

In any case, framing the issue as how much immigrants take out and put into the NHS is deceptive. Immigrants who work in the U.K. already contribute to the public finances by paying tax and contributing to national insurance, the country’s social security scheme. As the above-mentioned Guardian piece pointed out, immigrants already “pay for the NHS all year round”.

In this light, the NHS surcharge can be seen as double taxation, and it’s worth noting it will soon be extended to EU citizens, who make up a large proportion of the migrants coming to the U.K. Professor Jonathan Portes, senior fellow of the UK in a Changing Europe, said: “The overall impact of immigration on the NHS is positive, as the Government’s own Migration Advisory Committee concluded. Given that, it’s very hard to justify extending the double-charging that already applies to non-EU migrants to those from the EU.”

The surcharge may also work against the Chancellor’s stated intention of bolstering the NHS. By making it more expensive for workers to come, it could put off some of the people the NHS needs most.

For example, a qualified nurse wanting to come to the country under the Tier 2 skilled visa scheme could expect to pay £464 for the visa fee, and £1872 for three years’ worth of NHS surcharge. If they are coming with dependents, that’s an additional £1410 per child and £1872 for a spouse. According to the Royal College of Nursing, the average starting salary a qualified nurse coming to the country could expect to get is around £25,000, well below the national average salary for full-time work.

The issue is that nursing is one of the many NHS jobs that are currently on the U.K. government’s shortage occupation list. That is to say, it’s one of those jobs the U.K. desperately needs people for to prop up its health service. By increasing the price of entry for those nurses, the surcharge gives them less incentive to come to the country.

The Royal College of Nursing released some analysis last year, before this latest increase, showing that, if a nurse from a non-EU country came with two children to take a job at Band 5 (the average starting band for NHS nurses), “they would have to work from the start of the year until 22nd January, or for 116 hours, just to pay the £1,200 they will be billed under the current charge.” That was back when the surcharge was still £400. It is now 50% higher.

“Hard-working nurses from overseas who give their all for patients in the UK must not be penalised in this way any longer,” says Dame Donna Kinnair, Chief Executive and General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing. “The Government must abolish this cruel and heartless charge for nursing staff”.

It’s not just nurses. There are many NHS role the country badly needs people to fill, not to mention other sectors. Shara Pledger, associate at the specialist immigration law firm Latitude Law, said the combination of the surcharge and regular contributions into the NHS via taxation is an unpalatable one.

“The announcement today of a further increase to £624 is unwelcome. Brexit, the end of free movement, and negative immigration rhetoric already serve to undermine the government message that Britain is ‘open for business’. Increases to the cost of relocation do not encourage migration. This is particularly problematic when a large cohort of workers the U.K. is trying to attract are future NHS staff; they face effective double taxation to pay themselves.”

Source: The U.K. Needs Immigrants To Work In Its Health Service. The Chancellor Just Gave Them A Reason Not To Come.

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Delacourt: Are you a good Canadian? Justin Trudeau offers the coronavirus as a lesson in responsible citizenship

2020/03/13 Leave a comment

Good commentary and yes, a lesson in civic responsibility, one that the PM has had to personally demonstrate given his self-quarantine and cancellation of the FPT meeting given his wife having tested positive:

Ask not what the federal government is doing for you about the COVID-19 pandemic, but ask instead what you are doing to keep Canadians healthy.

Justin Trudeau didn’t exactly borrow from John F. Kennedy’s immortal lines about civic responsibility at his news conference on Wednesday, but the prime minister also, very deliberately, cast the virus crisis as a crash course for all of us in good citizenship.

“Often there are global crises or events when the average citizen does not feel particularly powerful to affect the fate of the economy. We are in a situation where the choices our citizens make will have a direct impact on the health of Canada and on the Canadian economy,” Trudeau said in French toward the end of his morning appearance in the National Press Theatre.

It was billed as a high-level update on what the Canadian government is doing for citizens as the novel coronavirus spreads its damage throughout Canada and the world. “We get it and we’re on it,” Trudeau said.

But slipped into all the talk of government having our backs — another new, favourite phrase from Trudeau’s team this year — was a gentle reminder or two that citizenship is a two-way street. The government is in a giving frame of mind, but a taking one too, in terms of what it’s asking of average Canadian citizens to keep the virus contained.

Canada’s chief public health officer, Theresa Tam, spoke at the news conference of how citizens — not the state or even the health-care system — would ultimately determine the trajectory of this virus.

“The advantage of being in the Canadian system is that people will be supported to do what public health has asked them to do but everyone can change the dynamic of that curve,” Dr. Tam said. “That`s such an important message that I don’t want people to lose sight of. Individual physicians can’t do it, public health units on their own can’t do it. Everyone has to contribute.”

The prime minister followed up with reinforcement. “At this point our strongest recommendation is for Canadians to be involved in keeping themselves and their families safe,” Trudeau said.

Asking people to change their behaviour for the sake of the country is a very 20th century concept in North America, when war, duty and sacrifice were part of the political lexicon. In this century, political appeals to people’s selflessness is usually framed as: do it for your kids, or the next generation.

But governments are still keenly interested in what they can do to change individuals’ behaviour to align with national or state goals, especially when it comes to climate change, for instance. Britain set up its famous “nudge unit” within its cabinet office in the early 2000s to study how behavioural-economic insights could be turned into public policy. And Canada, for its part, has something called the “impact and innovation unit” inside government, inspired in part by the British example.

The COVID-19 virus, now a pandemic, could well become a laboratory into how governments nudge their citizens into different behaviour. Certainly that old British unit, now a separate company called the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) has been having thoughts in that direction.

In a recent blog post, BIT laid out some thoughts on “how do we encourage the right behaviours during an epidemic?” It’s not easy, BIT acknowledged: the incentives for changed citizen behaviour are neither clear nor immediate. “People have no way of knowing if taking preventive steps will actually stop them contracting the virus. You’ll never know what didn’t happen.”

The blog post talks about the importance of public-health officials being front and centre to cultivate trust and why governments should be transparent, but also sparing about details,

“In some cases, less rather than more information leads to more accurate judgments,” BIT’s blog post states. “Communicating simple instructions that are easy to remember makes it more likely that people will follow them.”

I don’t know whether anyone inside the government is reading the BIT blog, but Trudeau’s news conference on Wednesday revealed a high degree of interest in the social science — as well as the medical science — of managing a pandemic.

“This is on all of us,” federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu told reporters later on Monday.

Canadian citizens have been asking a lot of their federal government in the past few months — from requests to fix snarled train traffic to the rescue of Canadians in trouble abroad. COVID-19 has turned that equation upside down. As Kennedy might have put it, this pandemic is forcing citizens to ask not what the country can do for them, but what they can do for the country.

Source: Susan DelacourtAre you a good Canadian? Justin Trudeau offers the coronavirus as a lesson in responsible citizenship

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Departmental Plans: Canadian Heritage (multiculturalism), IRCC (citizenship)

2020/03/13 2 Comments

Relevant highlights from the departmental plans. No real surprises.

The campaign and mandate letter commitment to eliminate citizenship fees is worded as “to bring forward a plan to eliminate fees for citizenship for those who have fulfilled the requirements for obtaining it.” This suggests that it will take some time which the financial projections, which do not include any impact from elimination of fees, confirm.

The previous mandate commitment to revise the citizenship guide, Discover Canada, remains part of the plan:

Canadian Heritage (multiculturalism) Planning highlights

Canadians value diversity.

In 2020-21, the Department will undertake the following activities towards achieving this departmental result by:

  • Supporting the new Anti-Racism Secretariat, which will demonstrate leadership in overseeing a coherent whole-of-government approach on combating racism and discrimination, ensuring comprehensive and coordinated actions with measurable impact, and fostering continuing dialogue with provinces, territories and our diverse communities.
  • Implementing a new data and evidence approach to promote a better understanding of the barriers faced by racialized communities, religious minorities and Indigenous Peoples; and collecting data and information and conducting research as a means of informing policy and program development and performance reporting on “what works” in anti-racism programming.
  • Delivering more targeted community-based projects to communities, which address systemic barriers to employment, justice and social participation for Indigenous Peoples, racialized communities and religious minorities.
  • Consulting civil society representatives of LGBTQ2 communities to lay the groundwork for an LGBTQ2 action plan that would guide the work of the federal government on issues important to LGBTQ2 Canadians.

Youth enhance their appreciation of the diversity and shared aspects of the Canadian experience.

In 2020-21, the Department will undertake the following activities towards achieving this departmental result by:

  • Supporting projects, exchanges, and forums that allow youth throughout Canada to connect with one another, have a better understanding of what they have in common, and learn new things about Canada’s diverse cultural expressions, history, and heritage, with special emphasis on reconciliation, diversity and inclusion, and official language minority communities.
  • Working towards breaking down barriers to participation and providing more opportunities for diverse youth, such as youth from official language minority communities, racialized and Indigenous communities, and rural, remote and Northern communities.
  • Advancing the government-wide priority of inclusivity by involving young people in federal decision making through its work in 2020-21. For example, the Youth Secretariat will continue to manage the operations of the Prime Minister’s Youth Council, including the recruitment of a diverse and representative cohort of new members in 2020; as well as working with the Privy Council Office to implement the commitment to have 75% of all Government of Canada Crown Corporations include a youth member, as mandated by the Canada Youth Policy.

Planned spending is about $130m. Source: https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/corporate/publications/plans-reports/departmental-plan-2020-2021.html#a4d

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship (citizenship) Planning highlights

Departmental Result 7: Eligible permanent residents become Canadian citizens

In 2018–2019, more than 207,000 people were granted Canadian citizenship, an 84% increase over the previous fiscal year. A significant reason for this increased demand for citizenship was the coming into force of Bill C-6, which amended the Citizenship Act to make it easier and give more flexibility to permanent residents in becoming Canadian citizens. In 2020–2021, the Department will continue updating the citizenship grant operating model and client service tools with the aim of reducing processing times, improving service delivery and client experience, and enhancing system efficiency while maintaining program integrity. The Department will also bring forward a plan to eliminate fees for citizenship for those who have fulfilled the requirements for obtaining it.

The Department remains committed to revising the citizenship guide and Oath of Citizenship to better reflect Canada’s diversity and, in particular, to include more Indigenous perspectives and history. In 2020–2021, the Department will continue to engage with stakeholders, including Indigenous organizations, minority populations, women, Francophones, LGBTQ2 individuals and persons with disabilities, on the content of the revised citizenship guide to support newcomers in studying for the citizenship test. IRCC also remains committed to completing the legislative work on changes to the Oath of Citizenship to reflect the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action.

IRCC will engage in a proactive communications campaign to encourage eligible permanent residents to become Canadian citizens by showcasing the value and pride of Canadian citizenship and highlighting the benefits of active and engaged citizenship to all Canadians, especially young Canadians.

Citizenship funding

For the citizenship component, resources are mainly used for assessment activities, administration of tests, criminal record checks, activities to detect and prevent fraud, citizenship ceremonies and development of tools such as citizenship tests and guides. Citizenship planned spending from 2020–2021 to 2022–2023 ranges between $69.2 million and $71.7 million.

Source: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/publications-manuals/departmental-plan-2020-2021/departmental-plan.html#core3

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Australia: Liberal politician accuses first female Muslim MP of thinking ‘her diversity is better than others’

2020/03/12 Leave a comment

Sigh:

A debate in the House of Representatives on the importance of multiculturalism in Australia turned sour on Thursday after Assistant Defence Minister Alex Hawke attacked Labor MP Anne Aly for thinking her diversity is “something better than other people’s diversity”.

Egyptian-born Dr Aly was the first Muslim woman to be elected to Federal Parliament after she won the West Australian seat of Cowan in 2016.

The controversial comments came after Dr Aly disputed claims by Mr Hawke that “most” of the politicians in the room were either born overseas or had a parent that was, as part of a speech on the success of multiculturalism in Australia.

“When the member opposite likes to cite her diversity as something better than other people’s diversity she ignores reality,” he said, resulting in shouts of “shame” from Labor MPs.

“The member for Cowan should reflect that people have come from all parts of the world to Australia, over many years. Just because you’re a migrant from one country doesn’t make you better than another.”

Mr Hawke, the Member for Mitchell, was responding to calls by Labor MP Andrew Giles for urgent action from politicians on the rise of racism and anti-Semitism in Australia.

Citing the attack of a heavily pregnant Muslim woman in Parramatta in November last year, he said Australia was “witnessing a creeping normalisation of hate”.

“Let me be clear: the vast majority of Australians abhor racism, but we need national leadership, setting the standard and leading by example. This has been sadly missing in this place,” Mr Giles said.

Mr Hawke defended the comments on Friday morning, accusing Labor of “feigning outrage and falsely claiming racism” in order to shut down debate.

“Labor under Anthony Albanese appears fixated on identity politics and appears constantly triggered by anything and everything,” he said in a statement to SBS News.

“Every MP has the right to engage in robust debate – certainly Labor members did in this discussion.”

Mr Hawke clarified that he was trying to make the point that Labor was misrepresenting the reality of multiculturalism in Australia, which he said is a “free, fair and tolerant place and the greatest multicultural success story in the world”.

“This constant erosion of debate threatens our freedom,” he said.

During the 2019 federal election, Ms Aly was the target of “racist” flyers which used her full Egyptian name, Azza Mahmoud Fawzi Hosseini Ali el Serougi, and accused her of proposing “blasphemy” laws to ban any criticism of Islam.

Dr Aly’s office has been contacted for comment.

Source: Liberal politician accuses first female Muslim MP of thinking ‘her diversity is better than others’

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Concerns raised after facial recognition software found to have racial bias

2020/03/12 Leave a comment

Legitimate concerns:

In 2015, two undercover police officers in Jacksonville, Fla., bought $50 worth of crack cocaine from a man on the street. One of the cops surreptitiously snapped a cellphone photo of the man and sent it to a crime analyst, who ran the photo through facial recognition software.

The facial recognition algorithm produced several matches, and the analyst chose the first one: a mug shot of a man named Willie Allen Lynch. Lynch was convicted of selling drugs and sentenced to eight years in prison.

Civil liberties lawyers jumped on the case, flagging a litany of concerns to fight the conviction. Matches of other possible perpetrators generated by the tool were never disclosed to Lynch, hampering his ability to argue for his innocence. The use of the technology statewide had been poorly regulated and shrouded in secrecy.

But also, Willie Allen Lynch is a Black man.

Multiple studies have shown facial recognition technology makes more errors on Black faces. For mug shots in particular, researchers have found that algorithms generate the highest rates of false matches for African American, Asian and Indigenous people.

After more than two dozen police services, government agencies and private businesses across Canada recently admitted to testing the divisive facial recognition app Clearview AI, experts and advocates say it’s vital that lawmakers and politicians understand how the emerging technology could impact racialized citizens.

“Technologies have their bias as well,” said Nasma Ahmed, director of Toronto-based non-profit Digital Justice Lab, who is advocating for a pause on the use of facial recognition technology until proper oversight is established.

“If they don’t wake up, they’re just going to be on the wrong side of trying to fight this battle … because they didn’t realize how significant the threat or the danger of this technology is,” says Toronto-born Toni Morgan, managing director of the Center for Law, Innovation and Creativity at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston.

“It feels like Toronto is a little bit behind the curve in understanding the implications of what it means for law enforcement to access this technology.”

Last month, the Star revealed that officers at more than 20 police forces across Canada have used Clearview AI, a facial recognition tool that has been described as “dystopian” and “reckless” for its broad search powers. It relies on what the U.S. company has said is a database of three billion photos scraped from the web, including social media.

Almost all police forces that confirmed use of the tool said officers had accessed a free trial version without the knowledge or authorization of police leadership and have been told to stop; the RCMP is the only police service that has paid to access the technology.

Multiple forces say the tool was used by investigators within child exploitation units, but it was also used to probe lesser crimes, including in an auto theft investigation and by a Rexall employee seeking to stop shoplifters.

While a handful of American cities and states have moved to limit or outright ban police use of facial recognition technology, the response from Canadian lawmakers has been muted.

According to client data obtained by BuzzFeed News and shared exclusively with the Star, the Toronto Police Service was the most prolific user of Clearview AI in Canada. (Clearview AI has not responded to multiple requests for comment from the Star but told BuzzFeed there are “numerous inaccuracies” in the client data information, which they allege was “illegally obtained.”)

Toronto police ran more than 3,400 searches since October, according to the BuzzFeed data.

A Toronto police spokesperson has said officers were “informally testing” the technology, but said the force could not verify the Star’s data about officers’ use or “comment on it with any certainty.” Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders directed officers to stop using the tool after he became aware they were using it, and a review is underway.

But Toronto police are still using a different facial recognition tool, one made by NEC Corp. of America and purchased in 2018. The NEC facial recognition tool searches the Toronto police database of approximately 1.5 million mug shot photos.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce, has been testing the accuracy of facial recognition technology since 2002. Companies that sell the tools voluntarily submit their algorithms to be tested to NIST; government agencies sponsor the research to help inform policy.

In a report released in December that tested 189 algorithms from 99 developers, NIST found dramatic variations in accuracy across different demographic groups. For one type of matching, the team discovered the systems had error rates between 10 and 100 times higher for African American and Asian faces compared to images of white faces.

For the type of facial recognition matching most likely to be used by law enforcement, African American women had higher error rates.

“Law enforcement, they probably have one of the most difficult cases. Because if they miss someone … and that person commits a crime, they’re going to look bad. If they finger the wrong person, they’re going to look bad,” said Craig Watson, manager of the group that runs NIST’s testing program.

Clearview AI has not been tested by NIST. The company has claimed its tool is “100% accurate” in a report written by an “independent review panel.” The panel said it relied on the same methodology the American Civil Liberties Union used to assess a facial recognition algorithm sold by Amazon.

The American Civil Liberties Union slammed the report, calling the claim “misleading” and the tool “dystopian.”

Clearview AI did not respond to a request for comment about its accuracy claims.

Before purchasing the NEC facial recognition technology, Toronto police conducted a privacy impact assessment. Asked if this examined potential racial bias within the NEC’s algorithms, spokesperson Meaghan Gray said in an email the contents of the report are not public.

But she said TPS “has not experienced racial or gender bias when utilizing the NEC Facial Recognition System.”

“While not a means of undisputable positive identification like fingerprint identification, this technology provides ‘potential candidates’ as investigative leads,” she said. “Consequently, one race or gender has not been disproportionally identified nor has the TPS made any false identifications.”

The revelations about Toronto police’s use of Clearview AI have coincided with the planned installation of additional CCTV cameras in communities across the city, including in the Jane Street and Finch Avenue West area. The provincially funded additional cameras come after the Toronto police board approved increasing the number placed around the city.

The combination of facial recognition technology and additional CCTV cameras in a neighbourhood home to many racialized Torontonians is a “recipe for disaster,” said Sam Tecle, a community worker with Jane and Finch’s Success Beyond Limits youth support program.

“One technology feeds the other,” Tecle said. “Together, I don’t know how that doesn’t result in surveillance — more intensified surveillance — of Black and racialized folks.”

Tecle said the plan to install more cameras was asking for a lot of trust from a community that already has a fraught relationship with the police. That’s in large part due to the legacy of carding, he said — when police stop, question and document people not suspected of a crime, a practice that disproportionately impacts Black and brown men.

“This is just a digital form of doing the same thing,” Tecle told the Star. “If we’re misrecognized and misidentified through these facial recognition algorithms, then I’m very apprehensive about them using any kind of facial recognition software.”

Others pointed out that false positives — incorrect matches — could have particularly grave consequences in the context of police use of force: Black people are “grossly over-represented” in cases where Toronto police used force, according to a 2018 report by the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

Saunders has said residents in high-crime areas have repeatedly asked for more CCTV cameras in public spaces. At last month’s Toronto police board meeting, Mayor John Tory passed a motion requiring that police engage in a public community consultation process before installing more cameras.

Gray said many residents and business owners want increased safety measures, and this feedback alongside an analysis of crime trends led the force to identify “selected areas that are most susceptible to firearm-related offences.”

“The cameras are not used for surveillance. The cameras will be used for investigation purposes, post-reported offences or incidents, to help identify potential suspects, and if needed during major events to aid in public safety,” Gray said.

Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, an assistant professor of criminology at the University of Toronto, said when cameras are placed in neighbourhoods with high proportions of racialized people, then used in tandem with facial recognition technology, “it could be problematic, because of false positives and false negatives.”

“What this gets at is the need for continued discussion, debate, and certainly oversight,” Owusu-Bempah said.

Source: Concerns raised after facial recognition software found to have racial bias

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Chinese government’s Confucius Institute holds sway on Canadian campuses, contracts indicate

2020/03/12 Leave a comment

Of note:

Sonia Zhao had to lie, in effect, when she left China to teach Mandarin at an Ontario university.

The contract she signed with the Beijing-run Confucius Institute indicated that Falun Gong practitioners – people like her – were barred from the job. But she kept her beliefs secret and hoped she could find more freedom in Canada. It was not to be.

She says she was trained beforehand to spin Beijing’s line if students asked about Tibet and other taboo topics, while Chinese staff at McMaster University’s branch of the institute made clear Falun Gong was poison. After a year, she quit and sought asylum here, becoming perhaps the world’s first Confucius Institute whistle-blower.

“I think they’re aiming to build a really beautiful, healthy image (of China) among those students,” Zhao said about the institute’s ultimate purpose. She believes Canada should have nothing to do with the agency. “It isn’t worth it to give up your freedom of speech or freedom even of thinking just to learn about a different language or culture.”

Her experience in 2011 did lead McMaster to end its relationship with the institute, a division of China’s education ministry that pays for Mandarin-language and cultural programs worldwide – and has long been embroiled in controversy. Advocates call the organization a generously funded cultural bridge, critics decry it as a “Trojan horse” for Chinese propaganda and influence.

But 10 other universities, colleges and boards of education across Canada still host their own Confucius outlets. And a National Post survey of the closely guarded contracts they signed found little in them that might prevent the kind of censorship and discriminatory hiring highlighted by Zhao.

Only one of seven agreements obtained by the Post includes any protection for academic freedom.

Several of the contracts indicate the local institutes must accept the agency headquarters’ assessment of “teaching quality.” One at the University of Waterloo-affiliated Renison College says any disagreements about running the institute should be referred to the Beijing headquarters, called Hanban.

Almost all bar the institutes from contravening Canadian or Chinese law, the latter routinely excoriated for its abuse of basic human rights. They also require compliance with the institute’s own constitution and bylaws. To this day, Hanban’s website says overseas teachers must have “no record of participation in Falun Gong and other illegal organizations,” a clear violation of Canadian constitutional and rights law.

Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont., even pledged to find a “prominent location” to erect a statue of Confucius to advertise the institute’s presence.

“I would say (Confucius headquarters) have absolute control,” said lawyer Clive Ansley  after reviewing some of the contracts. The former China studies professor practiced for several years in the country. “Any decision on what they call teaching quality, teaching materials, it’s all going to be made by Hanban.”

Ivy Li of the group Canadian Friends of Hong Kong said she was struck by the different roles set out in the contracts she perused at the Post’s request.

The Canadian hosts agree to provide office and classroom space and a steady supply of students, and in some cases to promote the program. Most of the contracts also say the Canadian school will provide funding, directly or in kind, at least equal to what the Chinese government contributes.

Hanban, the contracts stipulate, supplies the content – Mandarin teachers, textbooks, course software and other educational materials, which Li said come with Beijing’s particular spin.

“Even purely from a business point of view, it’s a very bad deal,” she charged. “Our universities are being used as a platform to promote (China’s) message, and that message is disinformation.”

But administrators here argue that despite what the contracts suggest, China does not actually interfere in the arrangements – arrangements they argue are an important conduit between the two nations. Meanwhile, they say, political issues never arise in the type of activities – from language training to Tai Chi – the institutes oversee.

“We have not had any pressure from China to do anything other than enhance cultural understanding,” said Lorne Parker, an assistant superintendent with the Edmonton public school division. “We are looking at our relationship with (Confucius Institute) as building a cultural bridge and not a wall. You can have more influence … by having those bridges.”

Launched in 2004, Confucius has opened 540 branches around the world. Unlike Alliance Francaise, the Goethe Institute and other cultural-outreach groups funded by some European states, it is an actual department of government and embeds itself, uniquely, inside foreign educational bodies.

The organization is hosted in Canada by two school boards – Coquitlam, B.C., and Edmonton – plus two colleges – Montreal’s Dawson and Toronto’s Seneca – and six universities – Saint Mary’s, Carleton, Waterloo, Brock, Regina and Saskatchewan.

The official stated goal is to teach Mandarin and spread the good word about Chinese culture and traditions. But even Xu Lin, Hanban’s director general, has said Confucius Institutes are “an important part of our soft power.”

“We want to expand China’s influence. This relies on our instructors, Confucius Institutes and language,” she told a conference in Beijing.

After a burst of expansion in Canada, there has been some retrenchment in recent years. Both McMaster and Quebec’s Sherbrooke University shut down their institutes amid controversy, while New Brunswick is in the process of closing the Confucius program run through one of its school districts. Toronto’s board killed the institute in 2014 just as it was about to launch. The B.C. Institute of Technology’s branch has been suspended.

But the program appears to be going strong elsewhere. To understand what the remaining hosts agreed to in exchange for Beijing’s largesse, the Post asked all for copies of the contracts they signed.

Three refused. Carleton University and Seneca College offered no reason for the denial; St. Mary’s University in Halifax said its contract is “with an external organization, and is a record that is not publicly available.” A university spokesman suggested the Post file a freedom of information request, a process that typically takes months, with no guarantee of success.

In fact, several of the Confucius contracts contain non-disclosure clauses.

Other schools said they had secured Hanban’s permission to release their agreements, or the documents had already been disclosed to local media after freedom of information applications.

All set up an arrangement between the Canadian educational facility and a partner college in China, with a director appointed from each side and a board to oversee the institute. In almost every case, Hanban agrees to supply Mandarin teachers, as many as 3,000 textbooks and other teaching material. Some mention start-up funding from Beijing of $150,000 to $250,000.

China provides about 15 teachers at a time to the Edmonton school district, though they act as “supports” in Mandarin classes that are led by the board’s own staff, said Parker.

“We received about a million dollars’ worth of books and materials from Hanban,” Bob Lajoie of the Coquitlam School District enthused to filmmaker Doris Liu in her documentary In the name of Confucius.

The nature of those books is a concern for some institute critics. Terry Russell, a senior scholar in China studies at the University of Manitoba, said institute texts he’s seen talk of Tibet being “liberated” by China and Taiwan forming part of the country.

“The perspective that is set out in the teaching materials is very much the Chinese perspective,” he said.

Most of the contracts also contain a clause that says “the institute must accept the assessment of the headquarters (Hanban) on the teaching quality.”

It suggests a degree of control by Beijing that director general Xu spelled out openly in an interview previously posted on the organization’s website.

“We haven’t lost education sovereignty,” Xu said. “It’s like the foreign universities work for us.”

Zhao said training before she left China was clear: never mention sensitive topics and if asked about them, offer Beijing’s standard line, that “Tibet is part of China and the government is treating them nicely, that Taiwan is part of China.”

When she and other Confucius teachers at McMaster watched and discussed the Hollywood movie Seven Years in Tibet – a critical look at China’s treatment of the region – their Chinese director said “if we kept talking about those things or watching those things, we need to write a report about our thinking because our minds, our thoughts are not following the Communist party.” Institute staff immediately tossed in the garbage a Falun Gong pamphlet brought in by a student, she said.

But Edmonton’s Parker said Hanban does not assess the teaching work there, and suggested the clause was included only to ensure the agency’s teachers provide good-quality instruction.

A Coquitlam spokesman said that its Confucius staff are hired locally, without the agency’s input, and Hanban has never visited the district to perform assessments.

Institute administrators in Canada also deny having to abide by any aspect of Chinese law or Hanban rules, despite what the contracts say.

“I’m not aware of any of those restrictions,” Parker said when asked about the Falun Gong teacher ban.

But if some Canadian Confucius partners dismiss any suggestion of undue influence from China, and their contracts erect limited firewalls against potential Beijing meddling, there is at least one exception.

When the University of Saskatchewan renewed its agreement with Hanban in 2016, it managed to include a provision that said the institute’s activities “will respect academic freedom and transparency, as well as University of Saskatchewan institutional values, priorities and policies.”

Without that caveat, the contract would not have been extended, Karen Chad, the university’s vice-president research, said in a statement.

But critics of the Confucius Institute question whether it will have much impact. To achieve its goals, they say, the institute has never needed to overtly propagate Chinese propaganda. It has taught Mandarin and presented Chinese culture in a way that simply avoids mention of religious persecution, censorship and other topics unflattering to the Communist regime.

“The Canadians get duped as they most often do when they deal with the government of China. They get duped into thinking these things are just cultural institutions and ‘Hey it’s a good idea to have a lot of Canadians learning Mandarin,’ ” said Ansley. “That’s not the Chinese goal at all … The goal is soft power, to promote a favourable image of China in the minds of Canadians.”

Source: Chinese government’s Confucius Institute holds sway on Canadian campuses, contracts indicate

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Sudbury region needs more immigrants, new report advises

2020/03/12 Leave a comment

More interest from smaller and more remote urban centres:

A new report suggests employers and the broader public need to embrace immigration as one of the best ways to fill critical skilled labour shortages in the region.

It’s one of the findings of the report, published by Workforce Planning for Sudbury & Manitoulin.

The report highlights labour shortages and changing attitudes towards work as key challenges that should be addressed.

While each region experienced growth in the number of businesses in their areas last year, a shrinking labour pool continues to be exacerbated by issues like changing demographics, out-migration, an increase in the number of people who fall into the NEET (not in education, employment or training) category, and employers who are unwilling to adapt, change, and train apprentices.

To survive and thrive in the future, the report suggests that communities should recognize the value of immigrants and remain adaptable and flexible as labour market realities continue to change.

“One interesting thing we look at was immigrant data,” said Reggie Caverson, executive director of Workforce Planning for Sudbury & Manitoulin.

“What we saw was that the majority of the immigrants living in the region actually arrived before 1981. From 1981 to 2016, we didn’t even manage to double that number.”

Before 1981, 5,335 immigrants were residing in Greater Sudbury; 500 in the Manitoulin District; and 790 in the Sudbury District.

From 2011 to 2016, 1,005 immigrants arrived in Greater Sudbury; 45 in the Manitoulin District; and 60 in the Sudbury District.

The report observed that over the last several decades, the number of immigrants arriving in the area has been increasing.

Caverson predicts that the data from the 2021 census will see that number increase further.

There have been several businesses in Greater Sudbury that have been turning to immigration to fill job vacancies, especially for skilled labour positions they are having trouble filling locally.

For example, Carriere Industrial Supply, located in Lively, recently hired 12 welders from Mexico, working with immigration and international recruiting agency IVEY Group to facilitate the process.

But there has been some public reluctance to accept immigration as a viable solution to the labour shortage issue.

Michael Addison, general manager of the LaCloche Manitoulin Business Assistance Corporation (LAMBAC) said that this reluctance is often due to misunderstanding.

“There is some resistance to the idea in small Northern communities,” he said. “But many people don’t understand that there just aren’t enough people to fill the jobs.”

Rural areas are seeing a greater increase in out-migration.

“Young families are choosing to move to bigger cities for the opportunities whether it be in terms of education, work, or experiences for their families.”

Addison, who is currently working with the City of Espanola to develop a five-year strategic plan, also said that before rural communities can hope to attract more people, certain issues have to be addressed.

In Espanola, for example, there is a lack of affordable housing, which jeopardizes the community’s ability to keep people there.

Immigrants might also find the transition into the community difficult because they may not have adequate access to food, places of worship, or community organizations that address their needs.

Developing regional strategies for everything from workforce planning to economic development is also difficult in rural areas that are often made up of numerous municipalities.

Organizations like LAMBAC are trying to develop strategies to get communities working together.

To address labour shortages, the report also looks at the barriers local residents might face when trying to enter the labor market.

Employment service providers in the region report an increase in international students, newcomers, refugees, immigrants, women and highly-barriered individuals who access their services.

They identified significant mental health issues (including mental illness, addiction, criminal records, and learning disabilities), youth with unrealistic wage expectations, poor working conditions, high employer expectations, and a lack of transportation or affordable healthcare as significant barriers to employment.

WPSM’s labour market plan also analyzes data about NEET youth that has not been reported before. NEET youth includes anyone who is not currently in education, employment or training.

This data is significant because it represents a portion of the working-age population that does not seem to be ready, willing, or able to work.

The data shows that the number or percentage of NEET youth aged 20 to 24 gets progressively higher with progressively lower levels of education.

The report recommends improvements to the apprenticeship system to avoid labour shortages in the skilled trades.

These improvements could include financial incentives for employers to hire apprentices, reducing red tape and introducing trades to children at a younger age.

Employers are still falling short when it comes to offering equitable opportunities for women, Indigenous people and persons with disabilities.

These underrepresented populations could benefit from increased opportunities to enter the workforce, the report also found.

It’s impossible to predict exactly what will happen in the labour market in the next 10 to 15 years, but the report ultimately identifies the need to remain flexible and adaptable in the face of change.

The 2019-2020 Local Labour Market Plan, published in February, aims to provide insight into what is happening with local industries, local jobs, and the local economy in Greater Sudbury, the Sudbury District, and the Manitoulin District.

As of June 2019, Greater Sudbury had 11,498 businesses; Manitoulin District had 1,088 businesses; and Sudbury District had 1,484 businesses.

While each of these areas has seen growth, 62% of those businesses have zero employees.

There were 9,804 jobs posted online in 2019 for Greater Sudbury; 420 for the Manitoulin District; and 316 for the Sudbury District.

In Greater Sudbury, there has been an increase in employment in various sectors, including construction, finance and insurance, real estate, and healthcare.

Source: Sudbury region needs more immigrants, new report advises

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Why celebrating women’s rights without an intersectional lens is meaningless

2020/03/11 Leave a comment

I wouldn’t go as far as meaningless, and I find intersectionality is too jargony to my taste but of course, one should not celebrate or discuss any group, whether men, women, specific religious or ethnic groups, without consideration and acknowledgement of that diversity.

Ironically, when I analyse economic outcomes of visible minorities compared to not visible minorities, the gaps are larger between visible minority men and not visible minority men than is the case for women as the example looking at second generation 25-34 year olds below illustrates (similar pattern for first generation):

Not that many years ago, four to be precise, a senior journalist was sincerely trying to explain how his newsroom was attempting to diversify its staff.

Job applicants could check one of four boxes, he said. Gender, race, disability and sexual orientation. What box would I check, I wondered out loud.

“Race,” he said. And just like that, he erased major parts of my identity, rendering everything beyond my brown skin invisible.

This was about 25 years after civil rights advocate and scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality to describe how people’s identities interact with power to create new forms of discrimination (specifically around Black women) when they overlap, and a few years after it had become a mainstream buzzword.

March 8 was International Women’s Day, a day that sprung from the women’s labour movement and began to be celebrated in many countries since the United Nations’ adoption of it in 1975. It gained a higher profile in recent years following important movements such as #MeToo.

But every day is every woman’s day. Celebrating the fierceness of the suffragettes who helped women win the right to vote doesn’t mean we forget that it was white women who won that right for themselves in Canada, Asians came decades later and that First Nations men and women didn’t have the right to vote until 1960.

If second-wave feminism looked at expanding rights beyond voting, I don’t know how we can celebrate representation in boardrooms and courtrooms without acknowledging that “diversity” initiatives have allowed white patriarchy to bend just enough to accommodate white women.

I don’t know how we can celebrate a narrowing gender wage gap without acknowledging that jobs traditionally done by women, often racialized women — health-care workers, daycare workers, nannies — are undervalued and underpaid. If full-time working women earned on average 75 cents to every dollar earned by a man, racialized and Indigenous full-time working women earned approximately 65 cents.

Women can use their own bodies however they choose, but I don’t know how we can celebrate Femen-type feminists and their topless protests without acknowledging that feminism is often reduced to sexual liberation or that sexual liberation is often reduced to the acreage of skin women expose.

For that matter, I don’t know how we think we’ve got anything close to liberation when women in the richest corporations are most valued when they show up to work looking thin, wearing tight clothes, tall heels and warpaint on their faces. And yeah, not in overly bright colours (too loud), not in overly short skirts (too slutty) or overly long ones (too daggy). Hair is ideally straight with a few waves permitted to flounce up at the bottom. While we’re at it, slow down those promotions if you must keep your hair grey, keep a ’fro or dreadlock or twist it, and heaven forbid you go home every time your kids are sick.

In other words, I don’t know how any reflection on the fight for women’s rights can be authentic unless it is intersectional. By that I don’t mean that we just include the voices of women who continue to be oppressed by identities of race, culture, caste, sexuality and disability.

To hell with “inclusion” and the paternalism inherent in it.

Inclusion is inviting a Black woman at a rally to speak about her experiences in a let’s-expand-our-minds sort of way. In this scenario, her experience — seen as a deviation from the norm rather than central to it — is still in service of non-Black women.

This kind of “inclusion” then allows organizations like the Toronto Public Library to claim diversity of thought and platform voices of those who reject trans women from the fold of womanhood.

On the other hand, true intersectional feminism means radically changing societal structures to put the most marginalized at the centre, making their concerns the first priority.

In this scenario, a discussion around sexual safety would yield not to more policing but less. In her book Invisible No More, Andrea Ritchie outlines how for white women, the concern around sexual assault and domestic violence is around police non-response. For women of colour, that police response is the problem, with too many experiences of officers responding to domestic violence calls sexually assaulting or otherwise violating the person who called for help.

The cases of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girlsare not a sideshow from “mainstream” women’s issues, but central to it.

Prioritize those voices and support structures around sexual assault might start to look more like transformative education for all genders at schools and highly trained, legally empowered social workers might be brought to the front line.

On reproductive rights, if issues such as the forced sterilization of Indigenous women or the dignity of the poorest women were at the centre, the discussion would go beyond condoms and abortion rights. It would lead to a revolutionary battle to keep governments away from our bodies, a fight for free services including legal and medical support, among other solutions.

Source: Star ColumnistsOpinionShree Paradkar: Why celebrating women’s rights without an intersectional lens is meaningless

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