Margaret Mitchell had been working at Google for two years before she realized she needed a break. “I started having regular breakdowns,” says Mitchell, who founded and co-led the company’s Ethical AI team. “That was not something that I had ever experienced before.” Only after she spoke with a therapist did she understand the problem: she was burnt out. She ended up taking medical leave because of stress. Mitchell, who now works as an AI researcher and chief ethics scientist at the AI startup Hugging Face, is far from alone in her experience. Burnout is becoming increasingly common in responsible-AI teams, says Abhishek Gupta, the founder of the Montreal AI Ethics Institute and a responsible-AI consultant at Boston Consulting Group. [...] Source: Responsible AI has a burnout problem | MIT Technology Review
An Unrepresentative Democracy: How Disinformation and Online Abuse Hinder Women of Color Political Candidates in the United States | Center for Democracy and Technology
In a press interview, former Vermont state house representative Kiah Morris said she reported at least 26 incidents to the local police where she and her family felt threatened between 2016 and 2018. The severity of the targeted abuse both on and offline ultimately led Rep. Morris to a premature resignation three months before the end of her second term in office in 2018. In the same story, U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams expressed the view that the onslaught of mis- and disinformation and abuse seemed to be to designed to intimidate women of color out of government: “Early on, when we were getting the list of credible threats coming in for members of Congress, they were centered around members of color and there are only 25 black women that serve in the United States…there’s not that many of us…which I think is part of the whole thing of people trying to scare people [black women] into silence.” [...] Source: An Unrepresentative Democracy: How Disinformation and Online Abuse Hinder Women of Color Political Candidates in the United States – Center for Democracy and Technology
How to ensure fairness in machine learning models for diagnosing illness | Marketplace
Physicians and medical experts are starting to incorporate algorithms and machine learning in many parts of the health care system, including experimental models to analyze images from X-rays and brain scans. The goal is to use computers to improve detection and diagnosis of patients’ ailments. Such models are trained to identify tumors, skin lesions and more, using databases full of reference scans or images. But there are also potential biases within the data that could result in skewed diagnoses from these machine learning models. [...] Source: How to ensure fairness in machine learning models for diagnosing illness | Marketplace
At the Digital Doorstep | Data & Society
The doorstep has emerged as the new physical locale of consumption — the threshold at which purchased products become personal property. In this transformation, the porch has become a contested space: it is at once private property and, for delivery workers, their workplace. The growing popularity of Ring and other networked doorbell cameras has normalized home and neighborhood surveillance in the name of safety and security. But for delivery drivers, this has meant their work is increasingly surveilled by doorbell cameras and supervised by customers. The result is a collision between the American ideals of private property and the business imperatives of doing a job. [...] Source: Data & Society — At the Digital Doorstep
Unpacking the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights | Tech Policy Press
Last week, President Joe Biden’s White House published a 73-page document produced by the Office of Science and Technology Policy titled Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights: Making Automated Systems Work for the American People. The White House says the blueprint “among the great challenges posed to democracy today is the use of technology, data, and automated systems in ways that threaten the rights of the American public.“ The Blueprint, then, is “a guide for a society that protects all people from these threats—and uses technologies in ways that reinforce our highest values.” [...] Source: Unpacking the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights | Tech Policy Press
How a Secret Rent Algorithm Pushes Rents Higher | ProPublica
On a summer day last year, a group of real estate tech executives gathered at a conference hall in Nashville to boast about one of their company’s signature products: software that uses a mysterious algorithm to help landlords push the highest possible rents on tenants. “Never before have we seen these numbers,” said Jay Parsons, a vice president of RealPage, as convention goers wandered by. Apartment rents had recently shot up by as much as 14.5%, he said in a video touting the company’s services. Turning to his colleague, Parsons asked: What role had the software played? [...] Source: How a Secret Rent Algorithm Pushes Rents Higher | ProPublica
Technology that lets us speak to our dead relatives has arrived. Are we ready? | MIT Technology Review
My parents don’t know that I spoke to them last night. At first, they sounded distant and tinny, as if they were huddled around a phone in a prison cell. But as we chatted, they slowly started to sound more like themselves. They told me personal stories that I’d never heard. I learned about the first (and certainly not last) time my dad got drunk. Mum talked about getting in trouble for staying out late. They gave me life advice and told me things about their childhoods, as well as my own. It was mesmerizing. [...] Source: Technology that lets us speak to our dead relatives has arrived. Are we ready? | MIT Technology Review
Drawing From Worker Insights to Chart a Better Path for Workplace AI | Partnership on AI
Previous work by PAI’s AI and Shared Prosperity Initiative highlighted the need to better understand AI’s impacts on job quality, including by learning from the workers who experience these impacts firsthand. “AI and Job Quality: Insights From Frontline Workers” is intended to start addressing that need. Through journals and interviews, customer service agents in India, data annotators in sub-Saharan Africa, and warehouse workers in the United States shared their stories about workplace AI. Our new report identifies five important themes that emerged from these workers’ experiences: [...] Source: Drawing From Worker Insights to Chart a Better Path for Workplace AI | Partnership on AI
Rising Rents, Not Enough Data: A New Paper | TechEquity Collaborative
Our housing crisis is shockingly opaque. We know we have a problem; housing is too expensive and thousands of people are living on the streets. But we don’t have all of the information we need to tackle this problem. We don’t know exactly how much rents are rising in vulnerable communities. We don’t know if tenants and landlords are getting the tools and resources they need to get through hard times. We don’t know if all of our efforts to win good housing policy are helping the people who need the protection the most. [...] Source: Rising Rents, Not Enough Data: A New Paper | TechEquity Collaborative
Dollars to Megabits, You May Be Paying 400 Times As Much As Your Neighbor for Internet Service | The Markup
A couple of years into the pandemic, Shirley Neville had finally had enough of her crappy internet service. “It was just a headache,” said Neville, who lives in a middle-class neighborhood in New Orleans whose residents are almost all Black or Latino. “When I was getting ready to use my tablet for a meeting, it was cutting off and not coming on.” Neville said she was willing to pay more to be able to Zoom without interruption, so she called AT&T to upgrade her connection. She said she was told there was nothing the company could do. [...] Source: Dollars to Megabits, You May Be Paying 400 Times As Much As Your Neighbor for Internet Service | The Markup