AI must get smart about the public good: Renzetti

2019/05/03 Leave a comment

Good column on the risks and the need for policy oversight, regulation and greater transparency on the criteria used by algorithms and the results of their decisions:

Let’s say you’ve submitted your résumé to Company X, hoping that all the work you’ve done on your cover letter will catch the eye of a discriminating member of the recruiting group. Perhaps your little joke about playing softball on the company team might even make you stand out from the pack.

But what if there is no recruiting group? No human one, that is. What if your CV is scanned by a computer algorithm, and that algorithm tosses out your résumé because it doesn’t like the fact that you played on a women’s softball team in university?

This, unfortunately, is not tomorrow’s dystopia; it’s today’s reality. A Reuters investigation last year revealed that Amazon’s planned résumé-vetting service was discounting applications that mentioned the word “women” or “women’s.” Why? Because the algorithm had been fed biased data. “Amazon’s computer models were trained to vet applicants by observing patterns in résumé submitted to the company over a 10-year period,” Reuters reported. “Most came from men, a reflection of male dominance across the tech industry. In effect, Amazon’s system taught itself that male candidates were preferable.”

Amazon scrapped that software, but bias in machine learning still exists in ways that will affect people every day, and are largely invisible. Some of those baked-in biases are outlined in a new report, Discriminating Systems: Gender, Race and Power in AI, from the AI Now Institute at New York University. They include facial-recognition software used by Uber that fails to recognize trans drivers; sentencing algorithms biased against black defendants; health-management systems that allocate resources to wealthier patients; chatbots that begin to spout racist and sexist language once they’re launched.

These biases matter because, as systems become more automated, they’ll affect all aspects of our lives, from education to transportation to health care. Right now, there’s little oversight into how and when these systems are deployed – and, crucially, who develops them.

The current state of women’s employment in AI fields is “dire,” the report warns – and it’s even worse for black and Latino people, whose employment in major tech companies is in the low single digits. The report cites the experience of one researcher, Timnit Gebru, who attended a machine-learning conference in 2016 and discovered she was one of only six black delegates – out of 8,500 participants.

Diversity among researchers and academics in the AI field is only one problem. As the AI Now report explains, much of the research that will ultimately transform our world is being conducted by a small, powerful group of companies operating under a cloak of proprietary secrecy, with little oversight or consideration outside of getting products to market quickly.

There’s reason to question whether some technologies – around surveillance, for example – should ever be rolled out at all. Yet, there’s very little discussion – at least not yet – about what role the public good should play in the development of these technologies. Expediency and profit are the only goalposts.

We should be having more of the types of public discussions that Yuval Noah Harari, a bestselling historian and philosopher, recently conducted with Fei-Fei Li, the co-director of Stanford University’s newly launched Human-Centred AI Institute. We need to start thinking differently, Dr. Harari said, when we build the tools that will shape the future: “What could be the cultural or political implications of what we’re building? It shouldn’t be a kind of afterthought that you create this neat technical gadget, it goes into the world, something bad happens and then you start thinking, ‘Oh, we didn’t see this one coming. What do we do now?’ “

In other words, it’s nearly impossible to catch the horse that’s bolted from the barn. Dr. Harari proposed a couple of solutions: One, people should engage in deep self-study so that algorithms don’t make better decisions for us than we do, and two, ethics should be a fundamental part of creating AI tools, which means actually putting ethics onto the curriculum for developers and engineers (I’m not sure which of these is going to be more difficult.)

Dr. Li, who said she “wake[s] up every day worried about the diversity, inclusion issue in AI,” echoed those thoughts. To perform better, she said, algorithms need to be developed by people with different backgrounds, with input from historians and philosophers, legal scholars and psychologists. Otherwise, they’ll end up replicating the narrow world view of the tiny group that created them.

The time to have these conversations is now, because the future is here, and it’s everywhere.

Source: AI must get smart about the public good: Elizabeth Renzetti

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Cultural appropriation: Why can’t we debate it? – Liz Renzetti

2017/05/13 1 Comment

I find this one of the best commentaries I have read yet on the issue of cultural appropriation and writers. Renzetti quotes extensively from the article in question, showing the depth and nuance in Hal Niedzviecki’s article.

More sophisticated than Christie Blatchford: Magazine editor the latest to be silenced for the sin of free speech but with the same underlying message: have the debate and discussion, don’t just try to shut it down and shun:

Yet the great works of literature are great leaps of imagination, sometimes so much so that they seem impossible, from a distance. When it was revealed that Mary Shelley was the author of Frankenstein, long after the novel was published, readers were aghast – how could a woman have conceived something so abominable!

That was 200 years ago. Should modern artists try to inhabit the fictional lives of people whose history and cultural experiences are completely different from their own? It’s fraught territory: Academics and writers have grappled with the concept of cultural appropriation, its proper definition, limits and boundaries, for years. It’s a subject discussed at length in books and conferences. It should at least be something we can discuss, without fear of censure.

That doesn’t seem to be the case at the moment. This week, Hal Niedzviecki, editor of Write Magazine (the publication of the Writers’ Union of Canada) resigned from his post after his short essay about Indigenous writing prompted heated criticism.

“I don’t believe in cultural appropriation,” Mr. Niedzviecki wrote. “In my opinion, anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities. I’d go so far as to say that there should even be an award for doing so — the Appropriation Prize for best book by an author who writes about people who aren’t even remotely like her or him.”

He goes on to counter the old teaching chestnut “write what you know”: “Write what you don’t know. Get outside your own head. Relentlessly explore the lives of people who aren’t like you, who you didn’t grow up with, who don’t share your background, bank balance and expectations. Set your sights on the big goal: Win the Appropriation Prize.”

Some people found this an ill-conceived way to preface an issue dedicated to Indigenous writing, and Mr. Niedzviecki acknowledges in his subsequent apology that he wrote “glibly.” But do glibness and even insensitivity require that he lose his job? Would it not be better if he stayed at the helm of the magazine and commissioned pieces that provided robust counter-arguments?

Mr. Niedzviecki’s essay goes on to say: “Indigenous writing is the most vital and compelling force in writing and publishing in Canada today. And this is because, in large part, Indigenous writers, buffeted by history and circumstance, so often must write from what they don’t know. What at first seems like a disadvantage also pushes many Indigenous writers into the spotlight. They are on the vanguard, taking risks, bravely forging ahead into the unknown, seeking just the right formula to reclaim the other as their own.”

The entire spring issue of the magazine is worth reading for its exploration of Indigenous writing and publishing, from shaping queer narratives to questioning the limits of fictional empathy. Mr. Niedzviecki’s interview with publisher Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm of Kegedonce Press illuminates the challenges facing writers who have traditionally not been seated at the CanLit table: “We still see many beautifully written books by Indigenous writers struggling to fully achieve the sales and wide acceptance that they deserve.” Maybe this issue of Write will cause people to think about how widely they cast their nets when they choose what to read.

Instead of the focus falling on the important content of the magazine, it is now all on one essay written by Mr. Niedzviecki, who has long been a supporter of independent voices in Canadian publishing (he also runs Broken Pencil magazine.) The Writers’ Union of Canada, which you would think would be interested in the free and frank exchange of opinions about the content and quality of writing in this country, has failed to support him.

Even if you think Mr. Niedzviecki is wrong, and his opinions misguided and hurtful – and many people do, and have argued this case strongly – it’s alarming to say that he shouldn’t hold them. Ideas that incite violence or hatred deserve condemnation. But what about ideas that are uncomfortable or provocative or even (to some readers) ignorant? We have lost the appetite for confronting those ideas, for sharpening different, resonant arguments to counter them.

In a statement, the Equity Task Force of the Writers’ Union argues that there are “racist systemic barriers faced by indigenous writers and other racialized writers.” I think this is largely true. The task force writes that Mr. Niedzviecki “dismisses” those barriers. I don’t think that is true, based on the content of his essay. It also calls for the retraction of the essay, among other demands. That would be a mistake: to ask for an unpopular idea to be dismissed from the record is a dangerous precedent.

What I’ve written here is likely to be contentious, which is fine. There will be other arguments (different, more resonant), and I hope we’ll listen to them all. Those are the benefits of writing, and reading.

Source: Cultural appropriation: Why can’t we debate it? – The Globe and Mail

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Don’t LOL, the kids can still spell: Renzetti

2015/08/25 Leave a comment

Elizabeth Renzetti on the state of kids spelling and the evolution of language:

“Healthy languages change,” Mr. Shea said. “Dead languages are static.”

The linguist and psychologist Steven Pinker also delivers a liberating smack on the nose to pedants and doomsayers in his recent book, The Sense of Style. “The problem with the Internet-is-making-us-illiterate theory, of course, is that bad prose has burdened readers in every era,” he writes. Television and radio were once blamed for a decline in writing skills; now, it’s texts and Twitter. But, as he argues, college students are actually writing more these days than ever before, and they do not make more mistakes than their predecessors or “sprinkle their papers with smileys.”

Instead of seeing a degradation brought about by technology, Mr. Pinker identifies a long-existing division between bad prose, which is bloated, rule-obsessed and obscure, and good prose, which is vibrant, direct and clear. And he banishes treasured notions, such as the idea you can’t start a sentence with a conjunction, to grammar’s slagheap. To deftly split an infinitive is accepted. Prepositions can be placed anywhere they want to cling to. (The rules around prepositions and other parts of speech, Mr. Pinker demonstrates, have more to do with centuries-old fashion than clarity or common sense.)

In other words, language is its own thing, shifting and transforming before our eyes, as much the possession of teenagers as the people who grew up on Strunk and White. “When it comes to correct English, there’s no one in charge,” Mr. Pinker writes. “The lunatics are running the asylum.” And that’s how it should be.

Don’t LOL, the kids can still spell – The Globe and Mail.

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Silence of the charities – Renzetti

2015/04/21 Leave a comment

Elizabeth Renzetti on what appears to be selective criteria in CRA charity audits:

If you look at the 52 groups that have been targeted for audits since the Harper government’s 2012 crackdown on political activity by charities, it’s not hard to see what joins them: advocacy of causes that the Conservative government thinks are, by its own admission, “radical.” I don’t actually know the full list, because it’s not been revealed, but last year the CBC revealed the names of seven environmental charities, including the David Suzuki Foundation and Tides Canada. The free-speech group PEN Canada and human-rights advocates Amnesty International were also targeted. Some 400 academics signed a letter denouncing the audit into the political activities of the progressive think tank Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The CRA swears up and down that there is no political motivation to the audits, but how is the public to know? The agency doesn’t reveal who is the target of its audits, nor how they’re prepared. Charities live in fear of catching the eye of Sauron.

“Among environmental groups right now there’s a broad reluctance to speak out,” says Calvin Sandborn, director of the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre. “It’s kind of like in Nixon’s America where you didn’t want to be the enemy that he’d sic the IRS on.”

The law students working with Prof. Sandborn recently released a report on the troubling legal underpinnings of the current audit system, and its need for reform. (Mr. Harper’s government may not have been the first to target charities, but it was certainly one of the more vehement, setting aside $13.4-million for audits shortly after adding “environmentalists” to the roster of threats Canada faces.)

Canada’s charities are hobbled in a bunch of ways, the report found. The CRA’s rules around what constitutes “political activity” are murky and confusing; there is little transparency about how those rules are applied; charities subject to audit often have to spend precious resources putting together documents for auditors and providing legal training for staff; and most important, many charities are self-censoring for fear of breaching the 10 per cent rule and facing shutdown by the CRA.

Although the report does not come to any conclusions about whether the current spate of audits are politically motivated, it does find the threat alone has a sinister chilling effect: “The important thing is that the audits themselves – and the mere perception that they may be targeted – are clearly silencing charities that have much to offer society.”

Other countries around the world don’t hobble the political advocacy of their charities the way Canada does. In some countries, like the Netherlands, lobbying by charities is encouraged. In others, like England, the body that oversees charities is an independent entity at arm’s length from government (in Canada, the CRA falls under the remit of the Minister of Revenue.) In the U.S., charities that spend too much on political activities (already set at a far more generous level than here) are taxed rather than shut down.

Silence of the charities – The Globe and Mail.

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Diversity our strength (someone tell the bigots)

2015/01/27 Leave a comment

Elizabeth Renzetti puncturing the myth of Toronto being welcoming of diversity, following a political panel of visible minority candidates:

It’s not just Toronto, of course. This week’s controversial Maclean’s cover story claiming Winnipeg is the most racist city in Canada highlighted the virulence of anti-aboriginal sentiment in the last municipal elections. As mayoral candidate Robert-Falcon Ouellette told the CBC last summer, “If there’s one person saying it, there’s 1,000 people thinking it.” (It should be noted that the man who was elected mayor, Brian Bowman, is Métis.)

As Ms. Chow said, “We’ve become complacent.” Because Canada’s largest city mostly trots along in peace and prosperity, it’s easy not to notice the bitter undercurrents that the past four years stirred up. Or perhaps to think that they’ve disappeared, along with the brothers who did the stirring. But that would be wishful thinking.

Politics is, of course, a hurly-burly – a brutal, elbows-up game. I don’t think any of the women who were on that panel thought otherwise when they stepped into public life. “I have very thick skin,” Ms. Chow said. “Probably too thick.” What they didn’t expect was the idea that they had no right to be in the game in the first place.

But those are precisely the kinds of candidates who should be playing the game. If we’re presented with more of the same faces touting more of the same platforms, an already apathetic, disillusioned electorate will switch off – in which case everyone loses.

And diversity among municipal elected representatives is proportionately less compared to other levels of government.

Diversity our strength (someone tell the bigots) – The Globe and Mail.

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What unites these slain native women? An inquiry might tell us – The Globe and Mail

2014/08/25 Leave a comment

Renzetti in the Globe on the need for an enquiry regarding slain native women and the double standards society has with respect to the most vulnerable (think of Leonard Cohen’s wonderful song, Everybody Knows):

This government’s fear of facts, study and research into any topic that might cast it in a poor light is well documented, and not worth repeating here. But where actual lives are at stake, this truculence beggars belief: It is only three-year-olds, and not national governments, who should hide in the dark with pillows over their heads hoping that the bad thing will go away if they just don’t look. If they look, of course, they might just see something unpleasant that requires immediate attention, and a bit of courage.

On Feb. 13, the day police believe Inuit university student Loretta Saunders was killed in Halifax, the Native Women’s Association of Canada presented 23,000 signatures to the House of Commons, calling for a national inquiry. Those names may as well have been written in invisible ink, for all the attention Mr. Harper gave them.

Does that sound cynical? I feel cynical at this moment. If hundreds of cattle farmers had gone missing, or if oil executives and Bay Street lawyers were being snatched from the streets, I bet we would have studies and recommendations coming out our ears. You wouldn’t see the Peace Tower for the mountains of paper. Some lucky developer would be building a maximum-security prison to deal with the horrible wave of farmer/executive/lawyer violence. Dolefully voiced television commercials would warn of the danger to men in suits and Stetsons.

But these are aboriginal women, many of them poor and described, euphemistically, as “living a vulnerable lifestyle.” You would think that the vulnerable would be more in need of the state’s protection, not less, but perhaps I’m living in some utopian dream of Canada – the kind you see on TV, sometimes, advertising the country to foreign tourists.

What unites these slain native women? An inquiry might tell us – The Globe and Mail.

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With all the comings and goings, who is Canadian any more? – The Globe and Mail

2013/09/29 Leave a comment

Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but Elizabeth Renzetti has a point on expatriate Canadians, identity and citizenship.

With all the comings and goings, who is Canadian any more? – The Globe and Mail.

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Unholier than thou? Gracious in victory, atheists – The Globe and Mail

2013/09/14 Leave a comment

Good piece by Elizabeth Renzetti on the need for tolerance and acceptance of those of faith by atheists. Extreme atheists are just another form of fundamentalists, with the same certainty, blindness to the other, and arrogance that there is only one way to live.

Perhaps what we’re seeing is a schism in the atheist church between the crushers and the appeasers. Prof. Dawkins loathes my own brand of happy-clappy, can’t-we-all-just-get-along atheism, which sees room in the world for the believer and the non-believer alike. “These vicarious second-order believers,” he writes in The God Delusion, “… their zeal pumped up by ingratiating broad-mindedness.” If you want to infuriate him, just say, “I’m an atheist, but …”

The thing is, if the crushers want to draw people to a life based on reason and not faith, you’d think they would learn from religion’s mistakes – contempt and recrimination are not great seduction techniques.

Unholier than thou? Gracious in victory, atheists – The Globe and Mail.

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