Category: observations

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Autumnal AI links

Facial tracking system, showing gaze direction, emotion scores and demographic profiling

Another blogpost where I’m just gonna splurge some links cos they’re just sitting as open tabs in my browser and I may as well park them and share them at the same time, in case anyone else is interested…

(If you’re somehow subscribed to this blog and don’t like this, let me know and I’ll see if I can set-up another means of doing this… I used to use del.icio.us, remember that?!)

Here’s some A.I. things from my browser then:

 

Adversarial attacks on machine learning

There’s been quite a bit of chat about the ways particular kinds of neural nets used in machine vision systems are vulnerable to techniques that either create mis-recognition of images or feed into training a mis-recognition.

danah boyd made this part of her public talks earlier this year, drawing upon a ‘shape bias’ study by Google researchers. Two recent overview pieces on The Verge and Quartz are accessible ways into such issues too.

Other stories on news sites (e.g.) have focussed on the ways machine vision systems that could be used in ‘driverless’ cars for recognising traffic signs can be ‘fooled’, drawing upon another study by researchers at four US institutions.

Another story doing the rounds has been the model of a 3D printed turtle that was used to fool what is referred to as “Google’s object detection AI” into classifying it as a gun, many of these accounts start with the same paper boyd cites move on to discuss work such as the ‘one pixel’ hack for confusing neural nets by researchers at Kyushu and then discuss a paper on the 3D printed turtle model as ‘adversarial object’ by researchers at MIT.

A Facebook spokesperson says the company is exploring securing against adversarial examples, shown through a research paper published in July 2017, but they apparently haven’t yet implemented anything. Google, where a number of the early ‘adversarial’ examples were researched, have apparently declined to comment on whether its APIs and deployed ‘AI’ are secured, but researchers there have recently submitted papers to conferences on the topic.

A reasonable overview of this kind of research is available on Popular Science by Dave Gershgorn: “Fooling The Machine“. Artist James Bridle (who else?!) has also written and made some provocative work in response to these kinds of issues, e.g. Autonomous Trap 001 and Austeer.

 

Biases and ethics of AI systems

There’s, of course, tons on the ways biases are encoded into ‘algorithms‘ and software but there’s been a little more attention to this sort of thing in relation to AI appearing in my social media stream this year…

Vice’s Motherboard covered a story concerning the ways in which a sentiment analysis system by Google appeared to classify statements about being gay or a jew as ‘negative’.

Sky News covered a story about an apparent case of erroneous arrests at the Notting Hill Carnival this year (2017) that were allegedly caused by facial recognition systems.

An interesting event at the Research and Development department at Het Nieuwe Instituut addresses ‘the ways that algorithmic agents perform notions of human race’. Decolonising Bots included Ramon Amaro, Florence Okoye and Legacy Russell.

 

The Financial Services Board have an interesting report out concerning: Artificial intelligence and machine learning in financial services, which seems well worth reading.

 

Defending corporate R&D in AI

Facebook’s head of AI is fed up with the negative, or apocalyptic, references used for describing AI, e.g. the terminator. It’s not just a whinge, there’s some interesting discussion in this interview on The Verge.

Technology policy pundit Andrea O’Sullivan says the U.S. needs to be careful not to hamstring innovation by letting ‘the regulators ruin AI‘.

 

Finally, the British Library have an event on Monday 6th November called: “AI: Where Science meets Science Fiction“, which may or may not be interesting… it will be live-streamed apparently.

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Reblog> Robots: ethical or unethical?

Twiki the robot from Buck Rogers

From Peter-Paul Verbeek.

ROBOTS: ETHICAL OR UNETHICAL?

To highlight the relevance of the UNESCO World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST) and to present its recent report on the ethics of robotics, the Permanent Delegation of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to UNESCO will organize a lunch debate on “Robots: ethical or unethical?” during the 39th General Conference, on Friday 10 November 2017, in Room X from 13:00 to 14:15.

The session will be opened by H.E. Ambassador Lionel Veer and Ms Nada Al-Nashif, Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences, and will be moderated by Prof. Peter-Paul Verbeek, COMEST member and philosopher.

The issues addressed will be the following:

· What change caused by robots can we expect? Presented by Prof. Vanessa Evers, University of Twente

· Which are the ethical dilemmas? Presented by Prof. Mark Coeckelbergh, University of Vienna

· How can we ensure that innovation is ethical? Presented by Prof. Peter-Paul Verbeek, University of Twente (COMEST member)

The presentations will be followed by an interactive debate with the audience and by a reflection on the role of UNESCO and the COMEST on these issues.

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Automation as received wisdom

Holly from the UK TV programme Red Dwarf

For your consideration – a Twitter poll in a sponsored tweet from one of the UK’s largest management consultancies.

Why might a management consultancy do this? – To gain superficially interesting yet fatuous data to make quick claims about? Perhaps for the purposes of advertising? Maybe… Perhaps to try to suggest, in a somewhat calculating way, that the company asks the “important” questions about the future and therefore imply they have some answers? Or maybe simply to boost the now-prevailing narrative that automation is widespread, growing and will take your job. Although to be fair to Accenture, that’s not what they ask.

In any case, this is not neutral – though, I recognise it’s a rather minor and perhaps inconsequential example. Nevertheless, it highlights the growth in pushing a narrative of automation from management consultancies, like Accenture, Deloitte and PWC, who are all writing lots of reports suggesting that companies need to be ready for automation.

A cynical analysis would suggest that it’s within the interests of such companies to jump on the narrative – it’s been in the press quite a bit in recent years, then ramp it up, and offer to sell the ‘solutions’.

What I find particularly interesting is that, while newspaper articles parrot the reports from these consultancies, there appears to be (in my digging around) scant serious evidence for this trend. A lot of it is based on economic modelling (of both past and future economic contexts) and some of the reports when they do list methods seem to use adapted versions of models that once said something else.

A case in point is the recent PWC report about automation that claimed up to 30% of UK jobs could be automated by the early 2030s, widely reported in the press (e.g. BBC, Graun, Telegraph), which was based upon a modified (2016) OECD model – the original model suggested that only 9% of jobs in OECD countries were at relatively high risk (greater than 70% risk in their calculation) of automation with the UK rated at just over 10% of jobs.

I’m working my way through this sort of stuff to get at how these sorts of narratives are generated, become received wisdom and feed into a wider form of social imagination about the kinds of socio-economic and technological future we expect. I’m hoping to pull together a book on this theme with the tentative title “The Automative Imagination”.

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The unapologetic ‘rockstar of regeneration’

A bike café

Thinking back to Jason Luger’s engaging blogpost about ‘the comeuppance’  of Florida’s evolution of his “creative class” thesis, this interview in the grauniad with Florida is sort of interesting to read… ‘Everything is gentrification now’: but Richard Florida isn’t sorry.

“I’m not sorry,” he barks, sitting in a hotel lobby in Mayfair, wearing a leather jacket and black T-shirt. “I will not apologise. I do not regret anything.”

*cough*

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Reblog> New paper: A smart place to work? Big data systems, labour, control, and modern retail stores

Gilbreth motion studies light painting

From the Programmable City team, looks interesting:

New paper: A smart place to work? Big data systems, labour, control, and modern retail stores

The modern retail store is a complex coded assemblage and data-intensive environment, its operations and management mediated by a number of interlinked big data systems. This paper draws on an ethnography of a superstore in Ireland to examine how these systems modulate the functioning of the store and working practices of employees. It was found that retail work involves a continual movement between a governance regime of control reliant on big data systems which seek to regulate and harnesses formal labour and automation into enterprise planning, and a disciplinary regime that deals with the symbolic, interactive labour that workers perform and acts as a reserve mode of governmentality if control fails. This continual movement is caused by new systems of control being open to vertical and horizontal fissures. While retail functions as a coded assemblage of control, systems are too brittle to sustain the code/space and governmentality desired.

Access the PDF here

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Media Theory journal – issue 1

Marshall Mcluhan

Issue 1 of the new journal Media Theory is up. Several ‘usual suspects’ amongst the authors list but then that’s to be expected to draw a crowd perhaps. I feel a little squeamish about the “manifestos” line but I haven’t read all of that bit yet, so let’s see… Only one ‘duff’ paper in there so far in my reading 🙂

Here’s a quote from Simon Dawes introductory paper “What is Media Theory” that I think nicely summarises the ethos, which is interesting (to me anyway):

With the relative ease with which new journals can now be established, the launch of a new journal of media theory obliges us all the more to justify the need for such an endeavour (Cubitt, this issue), to argue that we do indeed need yet another journal theorising media (Shome, this issue), and to convince at least some readers that the journal deserves the name, Media Theory (Mitchell, this issue). For this launch issue of the journal, editorial and advisory board members were invited to set out their own views on the importance of (a new journal of) media theory. While the journal can hardly satisfy the occasionally conflicting and contradictory wishes of everyone on the boards, this special issue represents a pluralistic manifesto for the journal – manifestos for various possibilities and directions for Media Theory. […]

Media Theory is not, therefore, a journal that privileges any particular theoretical approach, perspective or tradition to the study of media, but nor is it simply a matter of disinterestedly presenting their diversity or that of the range of theoretical concepts or tools proposed or applied in media research. Rather, in emphasising ‘media’, ‘theory’ and ‘media theory’, the journal aims to deprovincialise media theory by bringing into dialogue and debate the diversity of ways in which media are theorised. For despite the inherently interdisciplinary histories of the various disciplines in which media is studied internationally, there remains a tendency to restrict one’s reading to one’s own field or disciplinary, geographical or linguistic bubble, applying and developing theories without sufficient knowledge of how those theories have already been debated and developed elsewhere.

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Reblog > The Priority of Injustice

The Priority of Injustice – Clive Barnett

My colleague Prof. Clive Barnett’s excellent new book is out. He introduces it in a recent blogpost:

The Priority of Injustice

So, finally, the book that I have been writing, on and off, for the last four years, The Priority of Injustice, has been published – or at least, it’s real, since the formal publication date is next month (so I reserve the right to blog further about it as and when). It arrived earlier this week – a rather hectic week, which has oddly meant I have been too busy to experience the strange sense of anti-climax that often accompanies the arrival of the finished form of something that you have been making for so long.

This is, in one sense, my Exeter book – the first thing I did in my very first week here, four years ago, was write the proposal and send it off to prospective publishers, It’s also, though, my Swindon book, a book which attempts to articulate an approach to theorising in an ordinary spirit which has been published just a few weeks after moving away from that very ordinary town where I have lived while writing it.

It’s a beautiful object, with a great cover image, by Helen Burgess (I bought one of her pictures once, in one of those open-house art trail events that you get in places like Bishopston in Bristol, so that’s why I knew of her work; it turns out she is part of a geography-friendly network of artists). And I am honoured and humbled to have the book published in University Georgia Press’s very excellent Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation series.

I’m now faced with the challenge of promoting the book. I’m quite fond of the Coetzee-esque principle that books should have to make their own way in the world without the help of the author; on the other hand, I have some sense of responsibility towards the argument made in the book, a responsibility to help project it into the world. I’ve already realised that it’s not the sort of book that lends itself to an easy press release – ‘THEORY COULD BE THEORISED DIFFERENTLY’, SAYS THEORY-BOY doesn’t really work as a headline, does it?.

Read the full blogpost.

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The Economist ‘Babbage’ podcast: “Deus Ex Machina”

Glitched still from the film "Her"

An interesting general (non-academic, non-technical) discussion about what “AI” is, what it means culturally and how it is variously thought about. Interesting to reflect on the way ideas about computation, “algorithms”, “intelligence” and so on play out… something that maybe isn’t discussed enough… I like the way the discussion turns around “thinking” and the suggestion of the word “reckoning”. Worth a listen…

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AI Now report

My Cayla Doll

The AI Now Institute have published their second annual report with plenty of interesting things in it. I won’t try and summarise it or offer any analysis (yet). It’s worth a read:

The AI Now Institute, an interdisciplinary research center based at New York University, announced today the publication of its second annual research report. In advance of AI Now’s official launch in November, the 2017 report surveys the current use of AI across core domains, along with the challenges that the rapid introduction of these technologies are presenting. It also provides a set of ten core recommendations to guide future research and accountability mechanisms. The report focuses on key impact areas, including labor and automation, bias and inclusion, rights and liberties, and ethics and governance.

“The field of artificial intelligence is developing rapidly, and promises to help address some of the biggest challenges we face as a society,” said Kate Crawford, cofounder of AI Now and one of the lead authors of the report. “But the reason we founded the AI Now Institute is that we urgently need more research into the real-world implications of the adoption of AI and related technologies in our most sensitive social institutions. People are already being affected by these systems, be it while at school, looking for a job, reading news online, or interacting with the courts. With this report, we’re taking stock of the progress so far and the biggest emerging challenges that can guide our future research on the social implications of AI.”

There’s also a sort of Exec. Summary, a list of “10 Top Recommendations for the AI Field in 2017” on Medium too. Here’s the short version of that:

  1. 1. Core public agencies, such as those responsible for criminal justice, healthcare, welfare, and education (e.g “high stakes” domains) should no longer use ‘black box’ AI and algorithmic systems.
  2. 2. Before releasing an AI system, companies should run rigorous pre-release trials to ensure that they will not amplify biases and errors due to any issues with the training data, algorithms, or other elements of system design.
  3. 3. After releasing an AI system, companies should continue to monitor its use across different contexts and communities.
  4. 4. More research and policy making is needed on the use of AI systems in workplace management and monitoring, including hiring and HR.
  5. 5. Develop standards to track the provenance, development, and use of training datasets throughout their life cycle.
  6. 6. Expand AI bias research and mitigation strategies beyond a narrowly technical approach.
  7. 7. Strong standards for auditing and understanding the use of AI systems “in the wild” are urgently needed.
  8. 8. Companies, universities, conferences and other stakeholders in the AI field should release data on the participation of women, minorities and other marginalized groups within AI research and development.
  9. 9. The AI industry should hire experts from disciplines beyond computer science and engineering and ensure they have decision making power.
  10. 10. Ethical codes meant to steer the AI field should be accompanied by strong oversight and accountability mechanisms.

Which sort of reads, to me, as: “There should be more social scientists involved” 🙂