5 Myths of Co-Design for Ethical ML
- ‘Better’ involvement➡️ 'better’ design outcomes
- Co-design increases agency of patients
- Representation reduces risk of harms
- Co-design is an inherently ethical approach
- All problems can be co-design problems @josephdonia@jayshaw29 1/
Novel challenges when co-designing AI:
- participation is often unwitting (eg as training data)
- AI technologies can be repurposed after deployment
- black box nature
- hard to account for how data produced by system will be used in future 2/
"Better" involvement does not imply a stronger focus on the whole system (including consequences related to data commodification & surveillance), much of which is out of view for both users & designers 3/
The inclusion of communities in design processes does not necessarily address problems that lead to marginalization in the first place. Indeed, it rarely does. 4/
Questions to ask (design humility):
- when does co-design substitute other methods of public interest & action?
- what are the limits of design research?
- who is sidelined and what might we learn from them?
- when shouldn’t we design? 5/
Above quotes from "Co-design and Ethical Artificial Intelligence for Health: Myths and Misconceptions" by @josephdonia@jayshaw29
Friends with no previous interest in AI ethics have been asking me about it recently, so I want to share several underlying concepts about AI & power that are important to understand. 🧵 1/
AI and Power: The Ethical Challenges of Automation, Centralization, & Scale
In Australia, automation was used to scale putting poor people into debt (often illegally). The govt went from creating 20,000 new debts PER YEAR to creating 20,000 new debts PER WEEK, many of them bogus, but hard for people to appeal. 3/
Rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease, Multiple sclerosis, Type 1 Diabetes, Lupus, Hashimoto's, & Psoriasis impact a range of body systems, but all are autoimmune diseases.
Developing a lifelong autoimmune disease is often first triggered by an infection. 2/
Medicine is very siloed, and autoimmune diseases have often been treated in separate silos, based on which body system they impact, limiting our broader understanding of common threads. 3/
Even common viruses can have long-reaching, surprising, & devastating consequences. Fortunately, there are simple steps we can take to reduce transmission. 1/
The idea that a common childhood virus can quietly hang out in your nervous system, reactivate decades later to cause shingles, and then months AFTER shingles blisters clear up cause blood clots & strokes is mind-boggling to me 2/
VZV (chickenpox virus) is not just linked to strokes, but also linked to multiple sclerosis or vascular dementia (my note: possibly through reactivating other viruses).
After 12 years working as a data scientist & AI researcher, I have gone back to school for a Masters in Immunology. When I become fascinated by a topic, I want to learn as much as I can. 1/
My ultimate goal is to apply my machine learning & data ethics skills to immunology, but I want to make sure I fully understand the underlying domain & relevant context first. (With ML, it’s important to not just be a hammer searching for a nail). 2/
Immunology is a complex and vast field, full of open questions and not-yet-fully-understood phenomena.
Viral infections have been significantly associated with many neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s. 3/ cell.com/neuron/fulltex…
I made a mastodon account a few weeks ago: @math_rachel@mastodon.social (in case twitter falls apart)
I haven't used it yet and have mostly been taking a social media break prior to this. 1/
I used to post a lot on twitter (about machine learning, working in tech, algorithmic harms, & later covid). I loved this place and I learned a lot from others here. Thank you to those I met & learned from. (I plan to stick around, but who knows what will happen.) 2/
Being high-risk during an ongoing pandemic, not being able to safely access healthcare, seeing how many people I used to respect are going along with the erasure & destruction of disabled people-- all this has shattered my previous worldview. 3/
This is a thorough, incredibly well-researched explanation of the Qld government's unscientific & unethical pursuit of a "wall of immunity", which was doomed to failure before it had even begun. by @ColinKinner
Please watch the embedded video of Chief Health Office Dr. Gerrard. Note that when he repeatedly says that it is inevitable & necessary for us to all catch covid, he is speaking as someone with significant political power. 2/
Messaging from @qldhealth continues to focus on social distancing & hand-washing, even now in 2022. It has been known since 2020 that #COVIDisAirborne (we need high-quality masks & ventilation; 1.5m != safety), yet public health officials have still not updated their approach 3/