• Home
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Special Offers
Business Intelligence Info
  • Business Intelligence
    • BI News and Info
    • Big Data
    • Mobile and Cloud
    • Self-Service BI
  • CRM
    • CRM News and Info
    • InfusionSoft
    • Microsoft Dynamics CRM
    • NetSuite
    • OnContact
    • Salesforce
    • Workbooks
  • Data Mining
    • Pentaho
    • Sisense
    • Tableau
    • TIBCO Spotfire
  • Data Warehousing
    • DWH News and Info
    • IBM DB2
    • Microsoft SQL Server
    • Oracle
    • Teradata
  • Predictive Analytics
    • FICO
    • KNIME
    • Mathematica
    • Matlab
    • Minitab
    • RapidMiner
    • Revolution
    • SAP
    • SAS/SPSS
  • Humor

The AI community says Black Lives Matter, but more work needs to be done

June 6, 2020   Big Data
 The AI community says Black Lives Matter, but more work needs to be done

This week, as thousands of protestors marched in cities around the U.S. to bring attention to the death of George Floyd, police brutality, and abuses at the highest levels of government, members of the AI research community made their own small gestures of support. NeurIPS, one of the world’s largest AI and machine learning conferences, extended its technical paper submission deadline by 48 hours. And researchers pledged to match donations to Black in AI, a nonprofit promoting the sharing ideas, collaborations, and discussion of initiatives to increase the presence of black people in the field of AI.

“NeurIPS grieves for its Black community members devastated by the cycle of police and vigilante violence. [We] mourn … for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Regis Korchinski-Paquet, and thousands of black people who have lost their lives to this violence. [And we stand] with its black community to affirm that, today and every day, black lives matter,” the NeurIPS board wrote in a statement announcing its decision.

In a separate, independent effort aimed at spurring mentors to reach out to black researchers as they finalize their NeurIPS submissions, Google Brain scientist Nicolas Le Roux and Google AI lead Jeff Dean pledged to contribute $ 1,000 to Black in AI for every person who receives assistance.

For the AI community, acknowledgment of the movement is a start, but research shows that it — much like the rest of the tech industry — continues to suffer from a lack of diversity. According to a survey published by New York University’s AI Now Institute, as of April 2019, only 2.5% of Google’s workforce was black, while Facebook and Microsoft were each at 4%. The absent representation is problematic on its face, but it also risks replicating or perpetuating historical biases and power imbalances, like image recognition services that make offensive classifications and chatbots that channel hate speech. In something of a case in point, a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) study last December found that facial recognition systems misidentify black people more often than white people.

VB Transform 2020 Online – July 15-17. Join leading AI executives: Register for the free livestream.

“Despite many decades of ‘pipeline studies’ that assess the flow of diverse job candidates from school to industry, there has been no substantial progress in diversity in the AI industry. The focus on the pipeline has not addressed deeper issues with workplace cultures, power asymmetries, harassment, exclusionary hiring practices, unfair compensation, and tokenization that are causing people to leave or avoid working in the AI sector altogether,” the AI Now Institute report concluded. “[AI] bias mirrors and replicates existing structures of inequality in the [industry and] society.”

Some solutions proposed by the AI Now Institute and others include greater transparency with respect to salaries and compensation, harassment and discrimination reports, and hiring practices. Others are calling for targeted recruitment to increase employee diversity, along with commitments to bolster the number of people of color, women, and other underrepresented groups at leadership levels of AI companies.

But it’s an uphill battle. An analysis published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this year found that women and people of color in academia produce scientific novelty at higher rates than white men, but those contributions are often “devalued and discounted” in the context of hiring and promotion. And Google, one of the largest and most influential AI companies on the planet, reportedly scrapped diversity initiatives in May over concern about a conservative backlash.

As my colleague Khari Johnson recently wrote, many AI companies pay lip service to the importance of diversity. That was never acceptable, particularly considering that venture capital for AI startups reached record levels in 2018. But at this juncture, as Americans are forced to come terms with systemic racism, it seems downright inexcusable.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

Big Data – VentureBeat

Black, Community, DONE, Lives, Matter, more, Needs, says, work
  • Recent Posts

    • GIVEN WHAT HE TOLD A MARINE…..IT WOULD NOT SURPRISE ME
    • How the pandemic is accelerating enterprise open source adoption
    • Rickey Smiley To Host 22nd Annual Super Bowl Gospel Celebration On BET
    • Kili Technology unveils data annotation platform to improve AI, raises $7 million
    • P3 Jobs: Time to Come Home?
  • Categories

  • Archives

    • January 2021
    • December 2020
    • November 2020
    • October 2020
    • September 2020
    • August 2020
    • July 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • March 2020
    • February 2020
    • January 2020
    • December 2019
    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • August 2019
    • July 2019
    • June 2019
    • May 2019
    • April 2019
    • March 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • August 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • May 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • September 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • March 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
    • December 2016
    • November 2016
    • October 2016
    • September 2016
    • August 2016
    • July 2016
    • June 2016
    • May 2016
    • April 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
    • January 2016
    • December 2015
    • November 2015
    • October 2015
    • September 2015
    • August 2015
    • July 2015
    • June 2015
    • May 2015
    • April 2015
    • March 2015
    • February 2015
    • January 2015
    • December 2014
    • November 2014
© 2021 Business Intelligence Info
Power BI Training | G Com Solutions Limited