Error-prone or biased artificial-intelligence systems have the potential to taint our social ecosystem in ways that are initially hard to detect, harmful in the long term, and expensive - or even impossible - to reverse.
Interpretation
Artificial intelligence can negatively affect society in subtle and lasting ways that may be difficult to correct.
Kate Crawford's quote emphasizes the dangers associated with biased or unreliable artificial intelligence systems, highlighting how their impacts can be insidious and hard to identify at first. Over time, these negative effects can become deeply entrenched within our social structures, leading to consequences that may be costly or even irreversible, thus underscoring the importance of vigilance and oversight in the development and deployment of AI technologies.
In practice
In a public debate about AI regulations, this quote can emphasize the need for cautious development.
If you're not thinking about the way systemic bias can be propagated through the criminal justice system or predictive policing, then it's very likely that, if you're designing a system based on historical data, you're going to be perpetuating those biases.
We need to be vigilant about how we design and train these machine-learning systems, or we will see ingrained forms of bias built into the artificial intelligence of the future.
As we move into an era in which personal devices are seen as proxies for public needs, we run the risk that already-existing inequities will be further entrenched. Thus, with every big data set, we need to ask which people are excluded. Which places are less visible? What happens if you live in the shadow of big data sets?
Only by developing a deeper understanding of AI systems as they act in the world can we ensure that this new infrastructure never turns toxic.
It is a failure of imagination and methodology to claim that it is necessary to experiment on millions of people without their consent in order to produce good data science.
The fear isn't that big data discriminates. We already know that it does. It's that you don't know if you've been discriminated against.
Over the last ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.
I believe quite simply that the small company of the future will be as much a research organization as it is a manufacturing company.
Animal factories are one more sign of the extent to which our technological capacities have advanced faster than our ethics.
Together, we could open up government and invite citizens in, while connecting all of America to 21st century broadband. We could use technology to help achieve universal health care, to reach for a clean energy future, and to ensure that young Americans can compete - and win - in the global economy.
Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
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