Knowledge Vault 6 /24 - ICML 2017
How AI Designers will Dictate Our Civic Future
Latanya Sweeney
< Resume Image >

Concept Graph & Resume using Claude 3.5 Sonnet | Chat GPT4o | Llama 3:

How AI Designers
will Dictate Our
Civic Future
Design Impact
Ethical Issues
Research and Experiments
Designer Responsibility
AI and Society
AI designers shape society
through technology 1
Technology design influenced early
US laws 2
Bed sensors vs. Apple Watch:
design values 3
Designers: unelected policymakers in
technocracy 4
Technology changes societal values
accidentally 12
AI shifted from ideals
to human mimicry 6
Anonymized health data identifiable
through linking 5
Online ads show racial
name bias 7
Ad bias potentially violates
anti-discrimination laws 8
Biased ads violate credit
reporting fairness 9
Complex US health data
flow paths 10
Discrimination: complex legal landscape 20
Sweeneys experiments inform policymakers,
advocates 13
Harvard class reveals unforeseen
tech consequences 14
Student projects expose algorithmic
issues 15
Facebook location leak prompted
swift change 16
Washington state changed hospital
data law 11
Election website vulnerabilities paper
forthcoming 27
Proactive harm consideration minimizes
unforeseen issues 17
Product managers bridge design
and organization 18
Incorporate social considerations in
foundational research 19
Technologists responsible for social
considerations 24
AI designers wield immense
societal influence 29
Proactive experimentation crucial for
responsible design 30
Language models may perpetuate
societal biases 21
Publicizing vulnerabilities often spurs
fixes 22
Dataset biases perpetuate in
machine learning 23
Facial recognition: rapidly shifting
acceptance 25
Privacy protection workshops had
limited success 26
External audits should prompt
constructive fixes 28

Resume:

1.- Latanya Sweeney discusses how AI designers shape society through technology design decisions, often accidentally and without oversight.

2.- Early photography and phone recording laws in the U.S. were shaped by technology design choices like lacking a mute button.

3.- Sleep Number bed sensors gather intimate data without user control, while Apple Watch stores data locally, reflecting different design values.

4.- Designers are the new policymakers in a technocracy, even if unelected, as their solutions are market-driven without much oversight.

5.- Sweeney's early work showed how purportedly anonymized health data could actually identify individuals by linking to publicly available information.

6.- In the late 1990s, AI focused more on computing mathematical ideals rather than mimicking human behavior. Modern AI applications were formerly research.

7.- Sweeney found her name generated online ads implying she had an arrest record, which happened more for "black-sounding" vs "white-sounding" names.

8.- This ad delivery disparity could violate U.S. anti-discrimination laws if it led to unequal treatment, e.g. in employment decisions.

9.- A similar ad delivery bias appeared on websites aimed at black audiences, potentially violating credit reporting fairness regulations.

10.- Health data in the U.S. flows in complex ways, with only half the pathways covered by HIPAA medical privacy rules.

11.- Washington state sold hospital data cheaply in a way that could be re-identified, until Sweeney's research prompted a law change.

12.- Technology is changing fundamental societal values and institutions in often accidental ways, as designers focus on products over broader impacts.

13.- Sweeney's experiments demonstrating these issues have helped shore up advocates, regulators and journalists in understanding and addressing technological shifts.

14.- She started a Harvard class where students conducted impactful experiments revealing unforeseen technology consequences and presented findings to D.C. policymakers.

15.- Example student projects included algorithms to proactively catch online fraud, price discrimination by zip code demographics, and privacy issues.

16.- Student Aron exposed how Facebook leaked user locations, prompting swift change, but also faced personal retaliation from Facebook.

17.- Designers can minimize unforeseen harms by proactively considering how things could go wrong and seeking outside perspectives early on.

18.- Product managers bridging design teams and broader organizational concerns are well-positioned to spur proactive consideration of potential downsides.

19.- Academics tend to punt these considerations to commercialization, but incorporating them into foundational research would lead to better outcomes.

20.- Discrimination is legally complex - offering a student discount is allowed, systematically charging more by race is not.

21.- Language models may reflect societal biases in training data - designers must choose whether to try to change or entrench norms.

22.- Some worry publicizing tech vulnerabilities enables abuse, but Sweeney found shining a light often spurs responsible fixes that wouldn't happen otherwise.

23.- Datasets used for machine learning may have inherent unknown biases that get perpetuated - ongoing external auditing is needed.

24.- While co-design with users is valuable, the core responsibility lies with technologists themselves to proactively "bake in" social considerations.

25.- Facial recognition hit major turbulence in 2001 between Super Bowl surveillance backlash and 9/11 increasing acceptance - trajectory can shift quickly.

26.- Carnegie Mellon workshops on building in privacy protections had limited success - the onus is on core designers themselves.

27.- A forthcoming paper shows vulnerabilities in 36 state election websites during the 2016 presidential election.

28.- The top-level message is that while not everything can be anticipated, harms found through external audits should be met with constructive fixes.

29.- AI technology designers have immense power in a global technocracy to shape societal rules and values in lasting ways.

30.- Proactive steps by AI designers to envision and experiment around potential harms is crucial to responsibly wielding this influence for good.

Knowledge Vault built byDavid Vivancos 2024