AI determines what news you get served up on the internet. It plays a key role in online matchmaking, which is now the way most romantic couples get together. It will tell you how to get to your next meeting, and what time to leave home so you’re not late.
AI often appears both omniscient and neutral, but on closer inspection we find AI learns from and adopts human biases. As a result, algorithms hungary telemarketing database replicate familiar forms of discrimination but hide them in a “black box? that makes seemingly objective decisions.
Algorithms workers can’t see are increasingly pulling the management strings
For many workers, such as delivery drivers, AI has replaced human managers. Algorithms tell them what to do, evaluate their performance and decide whether to fire them.
But as the use of AI grows and its drawbacks become more clear, workers in the very companies that make the tools of algorithmic management are beginning to push back.
Trouble at Google
One of the most familiar forms of AI is the Google algorithm, and the order in which it presents search results. Google has an 88% market share of internet searches, and the Google homepage is the most visited page on the entire internet. How it determines its search results is hugely influential but completely opaque to users.
Earlier this month, one Google’s lead researchers on AI ethics and bias, Timnit Gebru, abruptly left the company. Gebru says she was fired after an internal email sent to colleagues about racial discrimination and toxic work conditions at Google, while senior management maintains Gebru resigned over the publication of a research paper.
I was fired by @JeffDean for my email to Brain women and Allies. My corp account has been cutoff. So I've been immediately fired
Gebru’s departure came after she put her name to a paper
flagging the risk of bias in large language models (the kind used by Google). The paper argued such language models could hurt marginalised communities.
Gebru has previously shown that facial recognition technology was highly inaccurate for Black people.
Google’s response rapidly stirred unrest among Google’s workforce, with many of Gebru’s colleagues supporting her account of events.
Further annoying Gebru’s coworkers and academic sympathisers was the perceived attempt to muzzle unwelcome research findings, compromising the perception of any research published by in-house researchers.