Big announcement from the White House today on what companies need to do to ensure responsible AI development. whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/…

Let's unpack the details. And there will be grades! (this is after all the end of semester). 🧵 "in order to seize the opportunities [AI] presents, we must first mitigate its risks."
"....this means that companies have a fundamental responsibility to make sure their products are safe before they are deployed or made public."

This is important: Validate, THEN deploy.

This article is a short but brilliant articulation of so many of the issues to consider with algorithmic governance. And without a single LLM in sight! Let's go through it.

https://twitter.com/algorithmwatch/status/1647944753634320384

The argument for automated decision making is sometimes about quality but it's almost always about efficiency and scale.

It was speculated by @awsTO that insisting that chatGPT not give explanations helps it give the right answer. I tried this: This is clearly wrong: consider the set {0,1,2}. I pointed this out.

Roko's* five stages of AI grief:

1. Denial: "there is no bias in AI systems. Math is not racist."

I feel like we have largely moved on from this stage, thanks to all the reporting we've had over the years.

* the basilisk will always be with you 2. Anger: "How stupid can you be to accuse objective technology of being racist. What kind of idiotic member of the wokerati are you?"

This keeps popping back up every time you think it's faded away. I'd add links, but I'd need to pay for the 4000 character version to do it.

The 5 principles in the #aibillofrights are common sense: systems should work, they shouldn't discriminate, they shouldn't use data indiscriminately, they should be visible and easy to understand, and they shouldn't eliminate human interlocutors. whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-upda…
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1/n But there's a lot going on "under the hood". Let's unpack them one by one.

Today: Safe and Effective Systems

The principle is clear: Rights-impacting systems should work, and work well. But what does that really mean? Don't the systems we deploy work already? 2/n

I'm very proud to see the release of the AI Bill of Rights (BoR) today. It all started with a vision articulated by @AlondraNelson46. And is the product of so much hard work and collaboration among so many within @WHOSTP, and within the government.
whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-upda… 1/n There were thousands of edits and comments that made the document strong, rich, and detailed. The AI Bill of Rights reflects, as befits the title, a consensus, broad, and deep American vision of how to govern the automated technologies that impact our lives. 2/n

This is a really tricky scenario that plays out in this story by @kashhill. And one where Clearview appears not as a villain but as a facilitator of justice. What's tricky is the question it raises: does the potential benefit as described here outweigh the harms? 1/n

https://twitter.com/kashhill/status/1571527138980909056

As with most actual scenarios, this is not a clean one: Clearview is not a neutral entity and the way they built their FR framework is problematic in so many ways. The point that @MusaJumana makes about transparency is also very pertinent. 2/n

I was talking to a Ph.D student recently and they asked me (or at least I understood them to be asking) whether, in the light of the Google fiascos and what we're seeing right now with big tech and AI ethics in general whether there's any point in doing the work that I do. 1/n I gave a brief answer at the time, to the effect of "the fact that we're seeing pushback means that our efforts are working", which felt a little unsatisfactory to me. But with @_KarenHao's brilliant new article on Facebook I feel like there's a more concrete shift. 2/n