
What a machine learning tool that turns Obama white can tell us about AI bias - edward
https://www.theverge.com/21298762/face-depixelizer-ai-machine-learning-tool-pulse-stylegan-obama-bias
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clircle
What does it mean that an AI is unbiased? Would it mean that the AI classifies
race correctly on average? Or something else -- e.g. zero misclassification
error for a specific race?

With bias, it's helpful to define what property is desired, and then measure
the discrepancy from that.

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currymj
for classifiers, often people want error rates not to differ too much on
different groups, but this is fraught with difficulties.

it seems to me that it is really situation dependent, complex, and you hit
tough philosophical issues about the nature of fairness and justice pretty
quickly.

on the other hand, with this model, i’m willing to say “i know it when i see
it”. if the model did not default to white facial features, it would be less
biased.

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zeroimpl
It seems like biases related to error rates in image classification systems
would be one of the easier problems to address - you basically just need to
load in more data until the minimum accuracy level for all peoples is good
enough.

The harder biases to address are going to be ones where the AI reinforces
current undesirable patterns. Eg statistically certain minority groups are
more likely to commit petty crimes. If you replaced police with AI robots,
these robots would then automatically label people from those minorities as
more suspicious. That sucks, and likely has much more complex solutions.

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mc32
I think Lucy Liu is a much better example of algorithmic bias.

Obama is the child of a white parent and a black parent, so will have
characteristics of both parents; so the algorithm should have either outcome
as a possibility. The default categorization of that mix by people depends on
the culture categorizing the person.

