Thread by @math_rachel

This idea that you can't highlight problems without offering a solution is pervasive, harmful, and false.

Efforts to accurately identify, analyze, & understand risks & harms are valuable. And most difficult problems are not going to be solved in a single paper.

https://twitter.com/mmitchell_ai/status/1335515059485696000

I strongly believe that in order to solve a problem, you have to diagnose it, and that we’re still in the diagnosis phase of this... Trying to make clear what the downsides are, and diagnosing them accurately so that they can be solvable is hard work -- @JuliaAngwin

With industrialization, we had 30 yrs of child labor & terrible working conditions. It took a lot of journalist muckraking & advocacy to diagnose the problem & have some understanding of what it was, and then the activism to get laws changed

We're in a 2nd machine age now.

Above two quotes are from this interview with @JuliaAngwin, who has done crucial investigative reporting on algorithmic bias & other harms of tech companies, including the 2016 ProPublica investigation into the COMPAS recidivism algorithm

fastcompany.com/90337954/who-c…

Back to @JeffDean, the idea that a conference-peer-reviewed paper on ethical risks should be retracted for not being positive enough is so extreme as to seem almost like parody, "we don't talk about problems, only solutions." How will you know & understand those problems?