[0] https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8026-a_story_of_discrimination_a...
Sufficiently advanced AI would be aware of the bias of its data, much more than any human ever could.
By the way, the IAT has very little credibility, and isn't based on the scientific method but thought up by sociologists. Ironic to use flawed human-made tools to call AI biased. The whole presentation is a joke: she uses a sample size of just a few Trump tweets, and then complains that the output would be biased (duh! sample size!); treated Tay AI tweets that were not written by Tay AI as proof of how "problematic" things can be (Tay could be made to repeat tweets made @ her verbatim, so many of these "problematic tweets" had nothing to do with its AI). She's also arguing that society needs to be reengineered by benevolent """scientists""" (social psychologists) and that people be bombarded with carefully-designed stereotypes to counter the stereotypes we've supposedly internalized. Disappointing to see this from a Princeton grad.
> Additionally, you still need to be really careful to write in ways that avoid furthering existing human bias.
Usually that involves not using emotionally-loaded "hand grenade words" that bypass peoples' rational minds, and using clickbait headlines written by malicious editors. AI could be made to avoid both.
I am unconvinced that we've proven that - that seems like a hopeful wish.
> Usually that involves not using emotionally-loaded "hand grenade words" that bypass peoples' rational minds, and using clickbait headlines written by malicious editors. AI could be made to avoid both.
It also involves being very, very careful about presentation of data. "Black people in the US are convicted of more crimes" is a perfectly truthful statement - but it turns out that there's an awful lot of nuance to the reasons as to why, which rarely ever have anything to do with one's genetics. And yet there's a good many people who will take that statement as suggesting that black people are inherently significantly more likely to commit crimes, which isn't even close to what was actually said.
Specific speech patterns and words also lead to bias. You can quite easily write two articles stating exactly the same set of facts with very little fluff, and still result in differently biased articles.
Or, in other words, facts without reasons behind them tend to further bias, and it's only once you have reasons that you can actually start to suggest policy.
You also seem to argue for blank slate dogma (that every group difference is caused by unfair government policy or societal "bias") and that provable facts must be silenced unless accompanied by their detailed etiology (which cannot be scientifically or factually verified, and therefore really just serves social purposes). I would argue that we should teach meditation in schools, every day, and that society should be more empathic and less judgmental. It should also be less afraid of truth, and less politically biased.
I'm arguing that none of the problems you bring up would be a problem with sufficiently advanced AI. They would move us towards the truth, not away from it.
Journalism's current credibility crisis stems solely from its attempts to be "socially useful" rather than truthful. I'm not sure why we should make AI copy us (again ironic since you're against AI taking on human biases).
Most bias isn't in the form of creating outright lies - it's picking and choosing what data to present. And if your solution is to not pick and choose what data to present, the output of your AI would be a life's work to study.
The more you understand the present, the more accurately you can predict the future. Big data increases your knowledge of the present, allowing you to understand what-causes-what much more precisely.
Again, that isn't the point. AI would be a step forward, and I'd gladly take journalists becoming unemployed if it causes a new AI-led era of Enlightenment.
You're missing the vision: AI, with its swathes of data, would be able to tell you precisely what percentage of blacks that have been put in prison over drug laws would never have committed violent crimes. People's perception that these laws are justified for "public safety" would recede. That's just an example.
You're arguing from a fundamentally obscurantist point of view, arguing that unless we know 100% of the facts, it's better to keep certain things quiet to prevent human bias, whereas you should be arguing that we'll never know 100% of the facts (obviously) and should just stop being so quick to judge. More facts are always better than less facts, period.
Because we can discuss what bias these people have, and there is a "marketplace of ideas" so to speak. We're not asserting that there is one potential truth based on what a machine says.
> We're not asserting that there is one potential truth based on what a machine says.
Strawman.
No, it isn't. I've said repeatedly they'd be much more accurate than humans, and much less biased than humans.
You keep taking a black-and-white version of my arguments, arguing against that, and moving the goalposts. I'm not sure you're debating in good faith.