A Twitter algorithm that favored light-skinned faces has now been shown to perpetuate a range of further biases.
But it was ditched after users found it chose white faces over Black ones.
Trying a horrible experiment…
Which will the Twitter algorithm pick: Mitch McConnell or Barack Obama?pic.twitter.com/bR1GRyCkia
Tony Abolish ICE Arcieri ?
The competition winners, who were announced on Monday, discovered a plethora of further issues.
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The researcher used acomputer-vision model to generate realistic pictures of people with different physical features.
He then compared which of the images the model preferred.
This bias could result in exclusion of minoritized populations and perpetuation of stereotypical beauty standards in thousands of images.
The other competition entrants exposed further potential harms.
The algorithm also has a racial preference when analyzing emoji.
Vincenzo di Cicco, a software engineer, found thatemoji with lighter skin tonesare more likely to be captured.
The bounty hunting model could encourage more of them to investigate AI harms.
It can also operate more quickly than traditional academic publishing.
In particular, my submission came with plenty of limitations that future analyses using the methodology should account for.
But I think thats a good thing.
The harmful software would not sit there for years until the rigorous proofs of harm are collected.
He added that there are also limitations in the approach.
Notably, algorithmic harms are often a result of design rather than mistakes.
Nonetheless, the contest showcased a promising method of mitigating algorithmic harms.
Story byThomas Macaulay
Thomas is the managing editor of TNW.
He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers.
Away from work, he e(show all)Thomas is the managing editor of TNW.
He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers.
Away from work, he enjoys playing chess (badly) and the guitar (even worse).
