Google has fired AI researcher and ethicist Timnit Gebru after she wrote an email criticising Google’s policies around diversity while she struggled with her leadership to get a critical paper on AI published. This angered thousands of her former colleagues and academics. They pointed at the unequal treatment that Gebru received as a black woman and they were worried about the integrity of Google’s research.
Continue reading “Google fires AI researcher Timnit Gebru”A year of algorithms behaving badly
The Markup has published an overview of the ways in which algorithms have been given decisional powers in 2020 and have taken a wrong turn.
Continue reading “A year of algorithms behaving badly”Racist technology in action: Cropping out the non-white
A recent, yet already classic, example of racist technology is Twitter’s photo cropping machine learning algorithm. The algorithm was shown to consistently preference white faces in the cropped previews of pictures.
Continue reading “Racist technology in action: Cropping out the non-white”