WSAI18 day 2 – Responsible AI is a woman – or…?

11/10/2018

Day 2 of #WSAI18 was all about responsible AI – at least in the track I followed. The day before the AI Commons framework was already announced and today a great new initiative for the Netherlands ALLAI was launched by Catelijne Muller, Virginia Dignum and Aimee van Wynsberghe  the three Dutch members of the EU High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence. ALLAI | NL is the first national Alliance on Artificial Intelligence in Europe to involve all stakeholders in the process of achieving Responsible AI.

 

Joanna Bryson and Rumman Chowdhury and others discussed the role Governance, laws and norms resulting in some great insights  such as “AI is just an extension of our own intelligence” and “we cannot outsource morality (to a program)”. And a simple way of looking at laws for AI, user versus manufacturer: looking at laws for cars ; if you hit a tree with your car and you were drunk you are liable, if the car breaks failed the manufacturer is liable.

Joanna and Rummanpannel on governance

 

Virginia Dignum gave a great presentation about Responsible AI as a glass box approach. AI is often a black box, but if we create clarity and expectations about input and output it becomes much more transparent. She gave a great example about measuring fairness and the question ‘what is fair’.

 

I also visited the IBM stand and got a nice tool demo that helps making your #AI and dataset more trusted and explainable. Thanks for the catch-up and introduction Louise Out-van Staveren. Trusted and explainable AI trusted and transparency in AI folder IBM

 

And in case you are wondering why it is that we imagine machines in (extreme) gendered form, Dr Kanta Dihal and Dr Stephen Cave from @AI_Narrative gave a great explanation!  Its not new (it dates back to 800bc). The idea that white educated men should the world can be lead back (at least in part) to Plato. Why are most bot women including recent things like digital assistant? Well in general (including in films like stepford wives or terminator) the creators are white men and we are much more comfortable bossing women around….
And why are many of the depictions (of male) robot so frighting and apocalyptic? Thats because these same men (the creators) are used to being in power, and are afraid of other beings in power (be it other men, women or things).

 

So lets work on some diversity and responsible AI 🙂