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Submitted via IRC for Bytram
What the Boston School Bus Schedule Can Teach Us About AI
When the Boston public school system announced new start times last December, some parents found the schedules unacceptable and pushed back. The algorithm used to set these times had been designed by MIT researchers, and about a week later, Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts, emailed asking me to cosign an op-ed that would call on policymakers to be more thoughtful and democratic when they consider using algorithms to change policies that affect the lives of residents. Kade, who is also a Director's Fellow at the Media Lab and a colleague of mine, is always paying attention to the key issues in digital liberties and is great at flagging things that I should pay attention to. (At the time, I had no contact with the MIT researchers who designed the algorithm.)
I made a few edits to her draft, and we shipped it off to the Boston Globe, which ran it on December 22, 2017, under the headline "Don't blame the algorithm for doing what Boston school officials asked." In the op-ed, we piled on in criticizing the changes but argued that people shouldn't criticize the algorithm, but rather the city's political process that prescribed the way in which the various concerns and interests would be optimized. That day, the Boston Public Schools decided not to implement the changes. Kade and I high-fived and called it a day.
[...] A few months later, having read the op-ed in the Boston Globe, Arthur Delarue and Sébastien Martin, PhD students in the MIT Operations Research Center and members of the team that built Boston's bus algorithm, asked to meet me. In very polite email, they told me that I didn't have the whole story.
There's more to it than first meets the eye.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 19 2018, @08:30AM (8 children)
What I learned here, was that people are selfish. Not all people, but enough people to make a difference. And, the SJW refrain of White Privilege.
People, in general, were accepting of this new bus schedule. Far more people were going to benefit, than the number of people who might lose a little. But, the problem was, exactly which people might lose something. Wealthy people, and perhaps less importantly, white people, stood to lose some benefit, whether real or imagined. It appears that poor people may be gaining something, and maybe poor brown and poor black people might gain a little more than poor white people.
But, because the privileged elite thought they were going to lose, then SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE™
This seems to be yet another instance in which democracy simply doesn't work the way it's meant to work. The squeaky wheels always get greased. The wealthiest have the means to make the most noise, unless the poorest just decide to riot.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Monday November 19 2018, @10:29AM (1 child)
Well, you learn something new everyday, today it was that there are actually places in the USA where "the privileged elite" send their kids to public schools.
Need to look on the bright side sometimes - Boston's public schools must be awesome (far better than the parts of the USA I've been to) if the elite send their kids there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 19 2018, @03:44PM
Boston's public schools are pretty awesome, as are Cambridge's the next town city over across the river (where MIT is). The high school looks like a college campus, and they have robotics classes in school. And if anything the cost of housing in the city over the past few years being out of control has only helped to fund the school's more, thanks to rising revenue from property taxes.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday November 19 2018, @10:38AM (4 children)
What I learned was that AI has reached the point where it can optimize schedules and provably save money, but the next frontier is the ability to use current computer text/image/audio/PSTN/video communication interfaces to:
Sounds like science fiction, but hey, we're already living in the future right now.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday November 19 2018, @08:32PM (3 children)
Can we not teach the computers to "convince" human beings of anything? Unequal distribution of persuasiveness is a breeding ground for demagoguery. In other words, when one group is more persuasive than the rest (and one group would initially have exclusive access to convincing computers), you tend to see liars and con men rise from that group to the highest places of power.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Touché) by krishnoid on Monday November 19 2018, @11:16PM (1 child)
Hmm -- you make a strong argument.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 20 2018, @04:59AM
Don't let him convince you!!
(Score: 3, Touché) by krishnoid on Monday November 19 2018, @11:25PM
Borrowing cold war (?) terminology, we are currently experiencing a "persuasion gap" with the Russians based on influence cues we observed shortly during the election. Mr. President, we can ill afford to let the Russians get ahead of us, which is why we're asking for additional DoD and NSA funding for AI persuasiveness research.
We're testing this right now, the results of which we have started applying in basic, controlled scenarios. Also, have you lost weight? And your hair looks fantastic today, sir. Very virile.
(Score: 0, Troll) by VLM on Monday November 19 2018, @12:49PM
From reading the article, it seems the losers were physically handicapped kids like the kid who takes two hours to eat thru a feeding tube.
In general, of course you're correct that anything anti-white or white hatred in general is extremely progressive and left wing, and Boston being left wing, you can assume any changes they make are inherently implied to be anti-white, although in this case if you read the article the changes were actually anti-handicapped people, LOL.