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Submitted via IRC for Bytram
In the introduction to her new book, Hannah Fry points out something interesting about the phrase "Hello World." It's never been quite clear, she says, whether the phrase—which is frequently the entire output of a student's first computer program—is supposed to be attributed to the program, awakening for the first time, or to the programmer, announcing their triumphant first creation.
Perhaps for this reason, "Hello World" calls to mind a dialogue between human and machine, one which has never been more relevant than it is today. Her book, called Hello World, published in September, walks us through a rapidly computerizing world. Fry is both optimistic and excited—along with her Ph.D. students at the University of College, London, she has worked on many algorithms herself—and cautious. In conversation and in her book, she issues a call to arms: We need to make algorithms transparent, regulated, and forgiving of the flawed creatures that converse with them.
I reached her by telephone while she was on a book tour in New York City.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Monday November 19 2018, @02:30PM (2 children)
What makes you think such programs are free from regulation now? What exactly would be made non-secret by a FDA-style organization that would be useful?
I hate this not because it's regulation, but because it's particularly stupid regulation. It'll be great for slowing things down, derailing productive economies, creating secure oligopolies (like Big Pharm), and just being yet another hoop of meaningless idiocy that businesses would have to jump through in the course of trying to function. There's no problem to address, and we already have a strong indication that the real world FDA works awfully with billions of dollars gambled away on various chemicals and medical procedures, often eventually rationalized only by some dubious p-hacking.
aristarchus complained in his recent journal [soylentnews.org] about "sociopaths" opposed to ethics. This is really how you create such opposition. Here, we have an ethics proposal that is great for controlling various parties, but useless for fixing actual ethical problems, while committing considerable harm in the process.
(Score: 2) by splodus on Monday November 19 2018, @05:17PM (1 child)
Thanks for that.
You are quite right – I’ve assumed there’s no regulation just cos I’m not aware of it, and she hasn’t mentioned any, but works in the field – so I’m just guessing she would have said if so... If there is regulation that you’re aware of, I’d be grateful if you’d link to some info?
I don’t think we can pronounce her thesis as ‘stupid’ till we know more – not sure I can be arsed to read her book, but it is something that interests me, so maybe I’ll find the time! (I’m hoping there’s more detail than just ‘we need an FDA!’ - but also, highlighting a problem doesn’t necessarily require a solution to make it legitimate, surely?)
I absolutely agree with you that regulation is going to cause its own problems – and I also agree that big pharma has benefited from the FDA’s systems at the expense of small operators and innovation in general…
Would you favour leaving things as they stand then? Leave it to the Free Market?
My default position is to avoid regulation whenever possible, so I’ve got a lot of sympathy with your view. I certainly wouldn’t want to see a situation where no one could write software without jumping through a load of legislative hoops!
There’s a danger of ‘something must be done!!!’ It’s a recipe for unintended consequences. I can’t say existing laws regulating medicines have definitely had a net benefit; maybe we’d have a cure for cancer now if it wasn’t for the FDA?
At the very least this must be a debate worth having?
I guess my fear is that the vested interests will object, of course – and they are powerful indeed. If the tech community doesn’t speak out about the dangers of relying on AI, then who will?
The media is making money off this tech – the big money is consolidating its position with it – so if the Courts become dependent on it, is there any avenue left to challenge the outcomes, in principle?
(And sure, you could argue that ‘people won’t stand for flawed judgements! They will vote out those who support it! Democracy!' But here in the UK – we are about to jump off a cliff as a direct result of the smart use of opaque algorithms to sway public opinion...)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 20 2018, @01:39PM
For example, there's plenty of cases where technologies or particular practitioners of technology have been ruled out as court evidence. So for the algorithm that's supposed to be used for sentencing? Show bias of the illegal sort (such as against gender, religious beliefs, etc in the US), and your have the basis for overturning every bit of sentencing done with that algorithm.
Scratch the surface of almost any human activity and someone is regulating it. You just need to look.
It still needs to be a problem in the first place. The key flaw is simply that an algorithm is not an action. When you regulate algorithms, you aren't actually regulating the problem behavior. And as I noted earlier, there's already regulation (and means to implement more regulation should that become necessary) that don't require any sort of specialized regulatory system. People have been implementing bureaucratic algorithms, for example, for thousands of years.
Further, most of the problems mentioned would be problems no matter what the algorithm was. Such as the project that siphoned a couple million UK residents' health data.
What AI? It's not what we have now. And we don't know enough, in the absence of credible AI, to decide what aspects need regulation.