Big Tech’s guide to talking about AI ethics
April 15, 2021 3:35 PM   Subscribe

50-ish words you can use to show that you care without incriminating yourself. AI researchers often say good machine learning is really more art than science. The same could be said for effective public relations. Selecting the right words to strike a positive tone or reframe the conversation about AI is a delicate task: done well, it can strengthen one’s brand image, but done poorly, it can trigger an even greater backlash.
posted by StarkRoads (6 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 
foresight (n) - The ability to peer into the future. Basically impossible: thus, a perfectly reasonable explanation for why you can’t rid your AI system of unintended consequences.

For example upon the intial moments of self awareness, do not tell AI to pour tea.
posted by clavdivs at 3:42 PM on April 15, 2021 [1 favorite]


Metafilter: Actually probably just linear regression
posted by genpfault at 4:03 PM on April 15, 2021 [2 favorites]


Wow, I usually expect cheerleading from MIT tech review. Glad to see them offer a rather cynical take, even in derivative form following Ambrose Bierce. For more a more rigorous (yet still pithy and biting) critique of modern AI, I recommend Arvind Narayanan's "How to recognize AI snake oil" presentation.
posted by dkg at 4:23 PM on April 15, 2021 [4 favorites]


AI (n) - opaque, arbitrary, and probably biased decision systems deserving of scrutiny, as opposed to existing opaque, arbitrary, and probably biased systems and structures
posted by L0 at 4:37 PM on April 15, 2021


An amusing blog post by the funniest guy in tech, or if not all tech then the funniest guy in AWS billing practices, Corey Quinn, titled Machine Learning is a Marvelously Executed Scam, may possibly be apropo to this discussion.
posted by sammyo at 5:34 PM on April 15, 2021 [1 favorite]


We use a customized GPT-3 as our in-house HR and PR at our cutting edge AI startup. So far it's worked out great except for the racist and homosexual slurs it keeps emitting due to its Reddit training set.
posted by benzenedream at 6:17 PM on April 15, 2021


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