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.
Similar quotes
The divorce between Church and State ought to be absolute. It ought to be so absolute that no Church property anywhere, in any state or in the nation, should be exempt from equal taxation; for if you exempt the property of any church organization, to that extent you impose a tax upon the whole community.
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.
Impermanence is not something to be afraid of. It's the evolution, a never-ending horizon.
Never was a government that was not composed of liars, malefactors and thieves.
Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.
How oft, in nations gone corrupt, And by their own devices brought down to servitude, That man chooses bondage before liberty. Bondage with ease before strenuous liberty.