Mind Readings: AI Bill of Rights, Part 1: Safe and Effective Systems

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Mind Readings: AI Bill of Rights, Part 1: Safe and Effective Systems

The government has proposed an AI Bill of Rights that outlines five fundamental rights that individuals should have when subjected to the outputs of AI systems. The first right is the right to safe and effective systems, which means that individuals should be protected from unsafe or ineffective systems. Automated systems should be developed with consultation from diverse community stakeholders and domain experts to identify concerns, risks and potential impacts of the system.

Mind Readings: AI Bill of Rights, Part 1: Safe and Effective Systems

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In this five part series, we’re going to take a look at the proposed AI Bill of Rights, and see what’s in the box, see what commentary we can offer about this document.

Now, you probably want to get a copy of this to read along, and I’ll put a link in the in the notes below.

But this is an important document for anybody who’s working with artificial intelligence, machine learning data science systems.

In particular, in marketing, if you are using any kind of marketing automation software, or CRM software that has machine learning and artificial intelligence built in from automated lead scoring to anything else, you should know what’s in this document.

This was released by the White House just a couple of months ago.

And while it as a whole does not carry the force of law, yet, there are many provisions with it that are already covered by existing laws.

And that’s one of the reasons why we want to take a look at this document.

Also, full disclosure, and disclaimer, I’m not a lawyer, right? If you want a lawyer on AI, go talk to Ruth Carter, go to Geek law firm.com.

For that, I’m not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.

But we are going to talk about some of the implications that could happen if your business is not doing things as ethically or as aligned with the law as you should be.

So there could be legal penalties for not using artificial intelligence in the right way.

five part series because there are five fundamental AI rights that are in this document.

And I think it’s important to point out, this is not a document about machines becoming sentient and having their own rights.

This is about the rights of individuals, human beings, when subjected to the outputs of AI systems.

So that important clarification.

So let’s dig in right number one, safe and effective systems.

You should be protected from unsafe or ineffective systems, automated systems should be developed with consultation from diverse community stakeholders and domain experts to identify concerns, risks and potential impacts of the system.

Now, one of the things I really like about this document is that it’s not just theoretical.

In each of the sections that we’re going to talk through, there are examples of the kinds of things that each write is supposed to mitigate or prevent.

So in this one for safe and effective systems, the first counter example is a proprietary model was developed to predict the likelihood of sepsis in hospitalized patients and was implemented at hundreds of hospitals around the country.

An independent study showed that the model predictions underperformed relative to the designers claims will also cause an alert fatigue by falsely alerting likelihood of sepsis.

Example two on social media black people who quote and criticize racist messages have had their own speech silenced when a platform is automated moderation system failed to distinguish counter speech, or other critique and journalism.

From the original hateful messages to which such speech responded.

Pretty shot wins Facebook.

Number three, a device originally developed to help people track and find lost items has been used as a tool by stalkers to track victims locations in violation of their privacy and safety.

The device manufacturer took steps after release to protect people from unwanted tracking by alerting people on their phones when the device is found to be moving with them over time.

And also by having the device make an occasional noise.

But not all phones are able to receive the notification.

And the devices remain a safety concern due to their misuse that would be Apple’s air tags.

And it was a relatively recent thing.

Number four, an algorithm used to deploy police was found to repeatedly send police to neighborhoods they regularly visit even if those neighborhoods were not the ones with the highest crime rates.

These incorrect crime predictions were the result of a feedback loop generated from the reuse of data from previous arrests and algorithm predictions.

So this first one safe and effective systems is a good idea.

I mean, all of these are good ideas that some of them are going to be harder to implement than others.

safe and effective systems is a pretty as slam dunks go for AI.

This one seems to be a pretty safe one.

Your system should do what it says it does.

Right? And the outcomes.

One of the reasons why this right is necessary to even be discussed is because nobody who’s building AI systems in these examples and these examples is asking the very simple straightforward question, What could go wrong, right? You make a tracking device.

And don’t anticipate that someone could misuse it right? How could somebody turn the system against its intended use? How could somebody use off label? What are the things that you could use that you wouldn’t want your system to be used for? Say, maybe you make a social network and it’s being used to undermine democracies around the world that seems like an unintended use.

Now, here’s the challenge.

And this is something that the guide only peripherally discusses.

It talks a lot about things like consultation, independent audits, evaluation, regular reporting, and things like that.

But there needs to be legislation in place to create penalties for violating these rights.

Because right now there isn’t right now there’s, there’s no penalty for Facebook, undermining democracy, there’s no penalty for Apple making air tags that can be used by stalkers, there’s no punishment.

For bad actors and bad actors.

Most of the time, when it comes to AI technology are the technology manufacturers.

There are obviously individuals who misuse the technology, right? They they intend to use it in ways that are not authorized.

But there also needs to be some level of liability for the manufacturer of the technology, or this is all just nice thoughts, right? This is the AI equivalent of thoughts and prayers, it doesn’t do anything.

If in the process of building a system, you have a committee internally that says, hey, how could this thing be misused, and somebody highlights, hey, you could use this to stalk somebody, and then you don’t take steps to mitigate that you should absolutely be held liable for it, you should absolutely be held liable for creating something that someone highlighted this could be a potential problem, and realistically potential problem by putting a tracking tag in someone else’s luggage.

That’s not like sci fi, right? That’s not some crazy James Bond.

Thriller, which is totally unrealistic.

No, it’s very realistic.

That’s very easy.

Taking a tracking tag and taping it to somebody’s car bumper, that’s not really realistic.

That’s been in like every spy movie since the 1960s.

So when we’re talking about artificial intelligence systems, we’re talking about how are the ways that it could be misused now, and the big question that we have to ask with all these systems is, how can they create unsafe outcomes? Right? What are the outcomes that would be inappropriate? What are the outcomes that ways you can misuse these systems? For example.

Deep fakes, has been a, a differential use of technology.

For a long time, the initial purpose was adult entertainment, but has since been used to simulate world leaders saying things literally putting words in their mouths, they didn’t say, as a propaganda tool.

The systems and their manufacturers that enable that to some degree have to be have a part of the accountability, the init, in order for these these regulations to have teeth.

Now, the catches for some of this is going to be open source systems.

Open source systems, by definition do not have a level of accountability.

Right? You release some your software to the public, you say here it is public, do with it, what you will we expressly disclaim any liability.

And we provide no support or help, right? It’s just here’s the thing.

With AI, that’s becoming a challenge, right? services and systems like Hugging Face is transformers, T, the T five transformers, the GPT, Neo X models, Stable Diffusion, these are all open source products, they’re given away freely, anyone can take them and reuse them.

And like any other tool, some people are going to misuse them.

So there is no provision right now in any of this document for dealing with the question of open source.

Because what you don’t want to do is you don’t want to stifle open source development either.

It is responsible for a substantial amount of the progress in the space academia open source, that’s been the case for decades.

So there has to be that part as well.

But overall, the safe and effective system seems pretty logical.

And our takeaway, as people who operate these systems is, what could go wrong? How could we be misusing the systems we’re using them from in ways that are unanticipated? Or What harm could we do with a system and not realize it? For example, I met with an insurance company a few years at a conference.

And they were talking about how proud they were they’ve developed a system that would only market to specific segments of the audience, because they wanted to get only the best customers and unfortunately, they reinvented redlining in the process, which is the act of discriminating against certain demographics within a city Again no one was there to ask Hey How could this thing be misused and clearly in this case it was so that’s part one Stay tuned next up will be part two on algorithmic discrimination if you’d like this video go ahead and hit that subscribe button

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