If you have rooms that are very homogeneous, that have all had the same life experiences and educational backgrounds, and they're all relatively wealthy, their perspective on the world is going to mirror what they already know. That can be dangerous when we're making systems that will affect so many diverse populations.
Interpretation
Diversity in perspectives is crucial for creating systems that serve everyone fairly.
In this quote, Kate Crawford highlights the risks of homogeneity in decision-making spaces. When groups are composed of individuals with similar backgrounds, experiences, and wealth, their collective viewpoint becomes narrow, potentially leading to systemic outcomes that overlook or harm diverse populations. This emphasizes the importance of including varied perspectives in processes that impact a wide range of communities.
In practice
In a conference about social justice, this quote could frame a discussion on the importance of diverse voices.
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.
This [a state militia system] appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist.
For it is often the way we look at other people that imprisons them within their own narrowest allegiances. And it is also the way we look at them that may set them free.
A being who, as I grew older, lost imagination, emotion, a type of intelligence, a way of feeling things - all that which, while it made me sorry, did not horrify me. But what am I experiencing when I read myself as if I were someone else? On which bank am I standing if I see myself in the depths?
We have the same soul at 60 that we had at 40, and the same soul at 25 that we had when we were 5.
Worshiping someone means...placing that person outside of our world. We are not worshiping anyone or anything, we are simply communing with Creation.
A fact is like a sack - it won't stand up if it's empty. To make it stand up, first you have to put in it all the reasons and feelings that caused it in the first place.
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