A paper by Beijing researchers presents a new machine learning technique whose main uses seem to be trolling and disinformation. It's been accepted for publication at EMLNP, one of the top 3 venues for Natural Language Processing research. Cool Cool Cool
arxiv.org/pdf/1909.11974…
arxiv.org/pdf/1909.11974…
The paper has no discussion of potential unintended uses (actually it doesn't say what the *intended* uses are except, tautologically, news comment generation). Unfortunately, EMNLP does not seem to require authors to address or acknowledge the ethical implications of their work.
Computer security has a long history of double-edged consequences of research. Security conferences these days require submissions to describe ethical considerations and how the authors followed ethical principles. Machine learning conferences should consider doing this.
Please ask questions not just of the authors but also the program chairs. Did the committee discuss the potential harms? Did it bother them? If reviewers don't ask the obvious questions, some fraction of researchers will simply respond to incentives.
Yup. Microsoft bears some responsibility here. It already requires internal review for papers to ensure that proprietary information isn't revealed. That process should include ethical review. Even better, don't wait until after the research is done.
Oooh I have an old paper with @benzevenbergen that addresses just this! Ethical review by PCs has many shortcomings, but it's better than nothing and relatively practical to achieve (as opposed to, say, a new IRB-like system). papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
@benzevenbergen This is an incredible response from one of the authors. But instead of getting upset at individual researchers, let's focus on improving our processes for regulating research ethics.
@benzevenbergen There's a long way to go in terms of incorporating ethics into research review processes — both within companies and in peer review. spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/robo…
