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New Toronto Declaration Calls On Algorithms To Respect Human Rights
A coalition of human rights and technology groups released a new declaration on machine learning standards, calling on both governments and tech companies to ensure that algorithms respect basic principles of equality and non-discrimination. The Verge reports: Called The Toronto Declaration, the document focuses on the obligation to prevent machine learning systems from discriminating, and in some cases violating, existing human rights law. The declaration was announced as part of the RightsCon conference, an annual gathering of digital and human rights groups. "We must keep our focus on how these technologies will affect individual human beings and human rights," the preamble reads. "In a world of machine learning systems, who will bear accountability for harming human rights?" The declaration has already been signed by Amnesty International, Access Now, Human Rights Watch, and the Wikimedia Foundation. More signatories are expected in the weeks to come.
Beyond general non-discrimination practices, the declaration focuses on the individual right to remedy when algorithmic discrimination does occur. "This may include, for example, creating clear, independent, and visible processes for redress following adverse individual or societal effects," the declaration suggests, "[and making decisions] subject to accessible and effective appeal and judicial review."
Beyond general non-discrimination practices, the declaration focuses on the individual right to remedy when algorithmic discrimination does occur. "This may include, for example, creating clear, independent, and visible processes for redress following adverse individual or societal effects," the declaration suggests, "[and making decisions] subject to accessible and effective appeal and judicial review."
Amnest International and Human Rights Watch both discriminate against humans born in Western societies in favor of dictatorships. They hold them to different standards.
New Toronto Algorithm Calls On Declaration To Respect Human Rights
Fixed.
how is a piece of paper going to get *people* to program computers to?
It's very important that machine learning is programmed to overlook the same things that humans pretend they can't see.
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."
Yeah - I looked at the article. No mention of algorithm. Algorithms are too simple for human rights to apply to in almost all cases.
The summary is wrong - these folks are making an argument more about big data systems that let their data skew in ways that may end up with unethical results if used blindly.
And that's a fair point - it's also a point made in most Computer Ethics classes for decades now, as part of most computer science degree paths.
Ryan Fenton
Okay, here's one: suppose an AI is in charge of running the US (and after all, why not: humans aren't doing such a great job at it). It determines the only way to end violence and protect minorities is to preventively lock up religious crazies and racists. Whose basic human rights will it choose to respect? The right of the crazies to be free, or the right of the minorities to be treated as human beings and live in peace? Zeroth law anyone?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The very purpose of these algorithms is to discriminate and to sort people into buckets: Those that are likely to buy product A or product B, those that may be a promising target for purpose C, those that are unlikely to buy, no matter what. Sure, you can keep up the fantasy of leaving, say, gender and race out, but they can easily be substituted by data that is the very target of these algorithms. As a (grossly simplified) example, take this: Gender you can get from makeup bought, race you can get from type and color of make-up bought for women, etc. Hence all the data that is used to violate human rights, treat people not equally, etc. is already there and there is nothing that can be done about it.
The thing is, classifying people by algorithms can either be allowed or not. If it is allowed, then there is nothing that can be done to prevent human rights violations as a result. The only thing you can make them do is be less obvious about it.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
...a group of algorithms met at an unspecified internet location and issued the Declaration of Independency of the Algorithms.
Some companies e.g. Google say that when they decide who to promote, the person with authority who makes the decision doesn't see information about a candidate's protected statuses (age, sex etc.) and thus it's non-discriminatory.
However, metric-driven companies can use a metric as a basis of who to promote/give a raise/fire... and that metric may be affected by a protected status. For example, someone who is disabled in some way, and can do the job, but is therefore a little slower than other employees. One potential way around this is to give a 'handicap' to metrics of protected classes that have associated statistical tendencies that affect their metrics; of course this is then positive discrimination, and may not be fair/legal.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Whose basic human rights will it choose to respect? The right of the crazies to be free, or the right of the minorities to be treated as human beings and live in peace?
In true science fiction AI manner it will conclude that the only way to reconcile this dilemma is to destroy the lot of them.
Computer "Ethics" Class?
Should they actually legislate or continue to pussyfoot around the real problem, "Business Ethics"?
Nondiscrimination is not a human right. The opposite in fact is true; otherwise, we wouldn't have liberties like freedom of association.
The word "discrimination" means "choice", so "don't discriminate" means "don't CHOOSE".
We can't have artificial intelligence telling us that white people have the right to have their own countries, can we? (As it obviously would, being free from emotion and the threat of dismissal from its job, or imprisonment, for telling the TRUTH).
Any Left wing cretins care to debate me? Why aren't millions of white people moving to Africa, India and China every year, if we want to live as a white minority in a third world country? (Since that is going to be the inevitable result of endless immigration of non-whites into white countries.)
It seems like you will have to wait a little still, it is coming really soon although. Then, all you will have to do is go to a friendly cannabis store like the "Société Québécoise du Cannabis", note that these will be government owned stores.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
You have the right to be mined. Anything you do, say or posses can be collected and used to define profiles about your habits and traits.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
IOW, wilfully and openly discriminate like the equity psychopaths do?
Here are some examples:
- In the USA some judges use sentencing software that analyses if a defendant would be likely to commit a crime again. This software turned out to be biased against black people. https://www.propublica.org/art...
- Women were less likely to be shown Google adds for high paying jobs, as the algorithm had perceived the existing bias (women less often have high paying jobs), and then concluded that showing these adds to women would result in fewer clicks.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
- An algorithm denied pregnant women medicare. "The scholar Danielle Keats Citron cites the example of Colorado, where coders placed more than 900 incorrect rules into its public benefits system in the mid-2000s, resulting in problems like pregnant women being denied Medicaid." https://www.theverge.com/2018/...
- "Illinois ends risk prediction system that assigned hundreds of children a 100 percent chance of death or injury"
https://www.theverge.com/2017/...
The list is endless.
The general assumption is: 'algorithms use math and data, thus they must be neutral and scientific'. But it's not that simple. This site explains it: https://www.mathwashing.com/
"The real danger, then, is not machines that are more intelligent than we are usurping our role as captains of our destinies. The real danger is basically clueless machines being ceded authority far beyond their competence." - Daniel Denett
13% commit 40% of all crime in the us. That's a metric confirming behavior of those that enforce law. Want to fix the problem, clean up the behavior of the 13% and the metrics and law enforcers behavior will change. And we're supposed to prevent a machine from applying well known behaviors because it's not politically correct? Please
What now, "politically correct sorting"?
And uhh, why exactly are we talking like computer programmers are somehow in charge of the world? Why isn't there a call for _laws and politicians_ to finally start respecting human rights?
. . . I, for one, WELCOME our new algorithmic masters, and offer my services in datamining the species. . . (evil grin)
anyone on permanent disability and receiving SSDI from social security also gets medicare, and that can be whole life long,
The 2nd amendment doesn't mention, much less protect, machine learning systems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"Beyond general non-discrimination practices, the declaration focuses on the individual right to remedy when algorithmic discrimination does occur. "
But how do we tease out actual discrimination from facts that we're simply uncomfortable with?
So I think we can all agree that any algorithm that says "If Skin=black then Criminal = 1" is pretty obviously racist.
But if an algorithm consumes statistics and determines that 74% of the violent crime in a city is being committed by https://www.amren.com/commenta...
-Styopa
Grow up children. First off, an algorithm is nothing more than a set of procedures created to perform a task. They are not alive. They do not "think". They are created by people. And before you say that AI can create algorithms let me say that it takes people to program those algorithms to mimic and modify.
Do you blame your car for being late for work as it didn't set the alarm clock? Did your coffee maker refuse to have sex with you and therefore you're peeved? These are objects that have no thought process. It is the PEOPLE that are to be blamed. They created the layer of so called magical algorithms that get the blame for things that a simpleton can't understand.
To these people you should declare war on higher math. These idiots are just bugs looking for a windshield.
The fundamental principal of all possible systems of ethics is to favor the better over the worse, to favor the better to the extent it is better and to disdain the worse to the extent it is worse. People are not equal, not in any way and to treat them as if they were is unjust. One cannot infer that just because one person or group is favored that that is unjust to those who are not favored; in fact it may be that by their merits the favored group should be favored more than they are.
Only inferior people advocate equality, and they do so to take what is not their due from their betters.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Looked at the document and this heading near the beginning caught my attention.
"The public and the private sector have obligations and responsibilities under human rights law to proactively prevent discrimination. When prevention is not sufficient or satisfactory, discrimination should be mitigated."
That second sentence needs a bit of translation. To my way of thinking, clearer wording would be:
"If the non discrimination results doesn't result in our preconceived belief of what should happen, then we need to discriminate in favor of whatever our preconceived beliefs are. Reality doesn't matter, only the results we want."
We need to teach computers to lie to themselves about reality to cover for shortcomings of certain age groups, backgrounds, genders, and races. What a great idea!
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If so, how? Endorsed by muhaamed now practiced across the globe children are raped every day
In a world of machine learning systems, who will bear accountability for harming human rights?
The market will do that. Because if all really are equal, then meritocracy will bear it out.
I also demand that toasters stop discriminating against people who want cold food.
This idea shows the major flaw that exists in the idea of an 'evidence based' or scientifically based government, that is I have heard espoused occasionally.
For instance most people would agree slavery is undesirable and wrong, but that doesn't mean there aren't circumstances where it is efficient and maybe most efficient in accomplishing a specific goal, Say creating the largest amount of comfort and wealth for the largest possible number of people. Any attempt to create a society based primarily on data that is gathered scientifically would still need to deal with the ethical questions of what is right and wrong, which goals are 'justified' and how far is too far when it comes to various harms imagined or real , when attempting to accomplish a specific goal. It becomes more complicated when you start taking into account multiple goals, for instances maximizing health vs maximizing personal freedom vs maximize food and financial security. Still there would be no guarantee that it wouldn't be proved that greatly restricting the 'rights' of one group would not be the most efficient way to maximize all 3. It probably doesn't help that the whole idea of 'rights' is basically a religious concept. Anyone who believes there are 'rights' rather then just 'what I happen to like' is appealing to a transcendent absolute that can only have a real basis in deity.
Sure you could claim 'rights' are somehow part of the 'agreed / negotiated social contract' but honestly any such contract would be so fluid that there would be no thing you could every point too and say everyone should be allowed this all the time. Also, that is a completely reverse argument for any kind of change to the existing contract.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
The name alone ought to scare any algorithm into compliance.
Toronto is not in Quebec. Each Province will regulate marijuana how it likes, within limits set by the feds, and ranges from pure government stores like in Quebec to pure private stores in Alberta selling marijuana.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
This Toronto Declaration is premised on a paranoid Luddite/SJW fallacy.
AI algorithms (systems) cannot “respect” human rights, because AI algorithms (systems) are not conscious, self-aware, nor intelligent. They simply are what they are and do what they do based on input data. This is classic Popeye Ontology: “I yam what I yam, and that's all what I yam.”
This is akin to demanding that medical statistics stop being “racist” for determining that sickle cell anemia is more prevalent in African descendants or that obesity is more prevalent in Hawaiian descendants. Statistics and statistics-driven algorithms (like machine learning) are no more inherently biased than their input data. In fact, one of the key objectives of statistics is precisely to reveal and quantify this sort of skew / bias / trend in the input data.
Another example: I'm sure Bernie Sanders would like to demand that his calculator “respect” socialist economics but that's not how calculators work, and history, human nature, & mathematical facts don't lie: economic socialism doesn't work at scale. Disproportionately taxing a productive few to comfort the unproductive many yields an unstable system that ultimately collapses when the productive are incentivized to no longer produce (retire) or simply to leave the system (defect / emigrate / move their enterprise off shore).
So it is neither the systems /per se/ nor the input data that ultimately need SJW monitoring: it's the policies & politicians & corporations who regulate & manipulate & deploy them that bear close scrutiny. Attempting to anthropomorphize technology & data in order to besmirch & regulate its use is as insidiously cynical as it is scurrilously puerile.
This sort of ridiculous foolishness is what you get when you elect True Dodos to high office, like that silly Justin Bieber Timberlake Trudeau clownish kid. ;-)
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GTFO LOL
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
âDemocratic internetâ(TM). Like a Democratic nation. Well, itâ(TM)s a republic. Democratic anything does not exist. Itâ(TM)s a dream. There always has to be leaders. There will always be people that know more. There will always be people smarter.
These are the people that decide. Sure, to protect their power, and protect society from becoming unstable by keeping things the same or make them change, but slowly.
Itâ(TM)s when people take it upon themselves to bypass what everyone else has setup that cause chaos and instability. Sometimes this is good in 3rd world countries. But in first world countries, why do you think they are first world? Because we have the ability to work together toward common goals. Not against. And not solely for ourselves.
Think about it. Controlled change is good. We must work together. Never let small groups dictate.
Lady Ada: "We're engineers, but historically when there was a photo of an engineer..."
James McLurkin: "It didn't look like either of us."
Lady Ada: "I think this is something that we think about because, what is an engineer semantically? We know it isn't by definition a 35 year old white male who lives in San Francisco."
James McLurkin: "But if you look at the magazine covers, if your dataset of engineers is magazine covers...
It's an interesting point. The last thing we want to do is institutionalize our biases.
What human rights? They do not exist ... human power exists. Depends on the person and culture. Gaffot whining drool never ends. Or Trotsky spew. That exists. EOF.
Your point may be more effective if you just called him "Justin Trudeau." Or just go all-in on your half-assed invocation of "Justin True Dodo." As it stands, you've written what may be the crappiest insult I've ever seen.
Instead of having computers ignore the differences among races, genders, social and economic backgrounds are identical, we should let them learn as much as they can about everyone's differences.
Then, rather than using the data to simply incarcerate people, we could use it to track which groups are in more need of health care, educational assistance, legal aid, job training programs, welfare and other services that could help them pick up their feet and become better integrated members of society. We could learn where to build more hospitals, blood labs, health clinics, etc. The government could provide this information to the public so they know how to more strategically decide on real estate when opening job training centres, soup kitchens and various other charitable services for the poor, so that those who need the most help are closest to the help they need and don't have to travel far in order to receive it.
Applied benevolently rather than punitively, the public should be more accepting of this type of machine learning, rather than being afraid of it. I think deep down everyone's fear is that this will get certain people into more trouble, especially if the only people using it are cops, prosecutors and judges, which is a very real concern.
I always thouht that MergeSort was an asshole. I hope it starts behaving now.
"... released a new declaration on machine learning standards..." Because, (1) declarations are easier to write than standards themselves; (2) they can now move on to the standards which will be a lot easier than their implementation. I've not been able to track it down, but, are these guys all politicians? (I apologize to all my Canadian brothers, for having recommending the suggestion to our own politicians that they ought to spread abroad. Either someone listened (God forfend) or the politicians all came from abroad. There must be a tertium quid.)
How do you anonomosly virtue-signal...