Tech & Society
Minorities Reported: Policing AI shows bias against Blacks and Latinos.
An independent investigation found evidence of racial and economic bias in a crime-prevention model used by police departments in at least nine U.S. states.
Bias
Business
GPT-3 for All: GPT-3 NLP Model is Available for Select Azure Users
Microsoft is making GPT-3 available to selected customers through its Azure cloud service.
Tech & Society
New Models Inherit Old Flaws: Foundation models can pass along biases to their fine-tuned progeny.
Is AI becoming inbred? The fear: The best models increasingly are fine-tuned versions of a small number of so-called foundation models that were pretrained on immense quantities of data scraped from the web.
Tech & Society
White House Supports Limits on AI: U.S. Rules Protect Citizens from AI-Powered Surveillance and Discrimination
As governments worldwide mull their AI strategies and policies, the Biden administration called for a “bill of rights” to mitigate adverse consequences.What’s new: Top advisors to the U.S. president announced a plan to issue rules
Machine Learning Research
Crawl the Web, Absorb the Bias: NLP Models Absorb Biases from Web Training Data
The emerging generation of trillion-parameter models needs datasets of billions of examples, but the most readily available source of examples on that scale — the web — is polluted with bias and antisocial expressions. A new study examines the issue.
Tech & Society
UN Calls Out AI: UN Report Highlights AI-Related Risks for Privacy, Bias
Human rights officials called for limits on some uses of AI.What’s new: Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, appealed to the organization’s member states to suspend certain
Machine Learning Research
Weak Foundations Make Weak Models: Foundation AI Models Pass Flaws to Fine-Tuned Variants
A new study examines a major strain of recent research: huge models pretrained on immense quantities of uncurated, unlabeled data and then fine-tuned on a smaller, curated corpus.
Tech & Society
AI Sees Race in X-Rays
Researchers from Emory University, MIT, Purdue University, and other institutions found that deep learning systems trained to interpret x-rays and CT scans also were able to identify their subjects as Asian, Black, or White.
Machine Learning Research
Smaller Models, Bigger Biases: Compressed face recognition models have stronger bias.
Compression methods like parameter pruning and quantization can shrink neural networks for use in devices like smartphones with little impact on accuracy — but they also exacerbate a network’s bias.
Tech & Society
U.S. Lax on Face Recognition: U.S. agency calls for stricter face recognition controls.
A U.S. government watchdog agency called for stronger face recognition protocols for federal agencies. An audit found that, while many employ face recognition, they may not know where it came from, how it’s being used, or the hazards involved.
Tech & Society
Danke for the Interview: AI-powered interview tools mistook German for English.
An independent test found flaws in AI systems designed to evaluate job applicants. MyInterview and Curious Thing, which automate job interviews, gave a candidate who spoke only in German high marks on English proficiency, according to MIT Technology Review.
Tech & Society
Is Ethical AI an Oxymoron?: Survey finds tech pros are pessimistic about ethical AI.
Many people both outside and inside the tech industry believe that AI will serve mostly to boost profits and monitor people — without regard for negative consequences.