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.
Surveillant anxiety is always a conjoined twin: The anxiety of those surveilled is deeply connected to the anxiety of the surveillers. But the anxiety of the surveillers is generally hard to see; it's hidden in classified documents and delivered in highly coded languages in front of Senate committees.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The anxiety experienced by both the surveilled and the surveillers is interconnected, yet often obscured.
This quote by Kate Crawford highlights the dual nature of anxiety in surveillance contexts, suggesting that those being watched experience a palpable anxiety, while those doing the surveilling harbor their own anxiety, which remains largely invisible to the public. The hidden nature of the surveillers’ anxiety, shrouded in complexity and secrecy, calls attention to the broader implications of surveillance on society and individual psychology, indicating that both parties are affected by this dynamic in profound ways.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the implications of government surveillance on citizens' behavior.
More from Kate Crawford
All quotes →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.
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A purely mental life may be destructive if it leads us to substitute thought for life and ideas for actions. The activity proper to man is purely mental because man is not just a disembodied mind. Our destiny is to live out what we think, because unless we live what we know, we do not even know it. It is only by making our knowledge part of ourselves, through action, that we enter into the reality that is signified by our concepts.
Europe will never be like America. Europe is a product of history. America is a product of philosophy.
We no longer admit any other truth than that which is expedient; for there is no worse error than the truth that may weaken the arm that is fighting.
I turn to history not for lessons but to confront my experience with the experience of others and to win for myself a sense of responsibility for the state of the human conscience.
Only when human sorrows are turned into a toy with glaring colors will baby people become interested - for a while at least. The people are a very fickle baby that must have new toys every day.
I'm a study of a man in chaos in search of frenzy.