NEWS
“Deep concerns” over bias in AI
A LACK of diversity within the Arti
ficialIntelligenceindustryneeds
to be tackled before bias becomes hard-baked into emerging technol- ogies,accordingtoareportfromAI Now. The report labelled the imbalance as a “diversity crisis”, with research showing race and gender inequalities are prev- alent across the industry. Just 15 per cent of AI research staff at Facebook are women, while the figure at Google stands at just 10 per cent. The picture for black workers is even worse with the figure for Google standing at just 2.5 per cent, while Facebook and Microsoft are both at four per cent. It also found that
80 per cent of AI professors are men. Discriminating Systems: gender, race, and power in AI – authored by Sarah Myers West, Meredith Whittaker, and Kate Craw- ford – calls for a “profound shift” in order to address the crisis, saying: “The AI industry needs to acknowledge the gravity of its diver- sity problem, and admit that existing methods have failed to contend with the uneven distribution of power, and the means by which AI can reinforce such inequality. Further, many researchers have shown that bias in AI systems reflects historical patterns of discrimination. These are two manifestations of the same problem, and they must be addressed together.” It warns that this under-representation is
EU passes controversial copyright directive
MEMBERSoftheEuropeanParlia- ment voted348 to 274 to pass the EuropeanCopyrightDirectiveafter politicians were subjected to the most intense lobbying the parlia- menthaseverseen. The focus of controversy was on laws dubbed the “link tax” and the “upload filter”. The link tax (formerly article 11, now article 15 in the new draft) could see online news sites like Google News and other aggregators paying licensing fees to content creators such as newspapers. The “upload filter” (formerly article 13, now article 17) will make platforms like YouTube liable for copyright infringe- ments by users – hence the threat that platforms will filter content to protect themselves.
The commercial interests of tech com- panies and ethical interests of free speech campaigners were aligned against the changes. The claim was made that the changes would break the internet. On the other side, authors, artists and me- dia companies supported the changes. Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Finland and Sweden voted against it. Bel- gium, Estonia and Slovenia abstained. In the UK, there are divisions within
April-May 2019
leading to worrying trends in AI, and says: “The use of AI systems for the classifica- tion, detection, and prediction of race and gender is in urgent need of re-evaluation.” There is a fear that some AI profiling sys-
tems “are replicating patterns of racial and gender bias in ways that can deepen and justify historical inequality. The commer- cial deployment of these tools is cause for deep concern.”
The report calls for culture change that leads
to a rebalancing of the industry and makes a series of recommendations to achieve that, including promotion of under-represented groups to senior positions. The full report can be found at https://bit. ly/2V6xelZ.
the Conservative Party. In March, Boris Johnson tweeted that the Copyright Directive was “terrible for the internet. A classic EU law to help the rich and pow- erful…” but the majority of Conservative Party’s 19 MEPs voted in favour of it. A spokesperson for the IPO told law website
Out-Law.com: “The government has supported the goals of the EU Copyright Directive throughout its negotiation… The UK’s ability to implement the Directive into domestic law will be influenced by the wider context of our departure from the EU.”
Germany voted in favour but Katarina
Barley, Germany’s justice minister, said: “I very much regret that the European Parliament did not come out against upload filters. The necessary reform of copyright should not be at the expense of free speech…” Guy Verhofstadt, Belgium MEP and leader of ALDE, denied the directive threatened internet freedom saying: “The only freedom you have is to send your data mainly to US companies who are using it for their profit. That is all.” French culture minister Franck Riester
said it is a “victory for artists, journalists, European companies and citizens.”
INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL 5
News
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