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.
We look at young black kids with a scowl on their face, walking a certain way down the block with their sweatpants dangling, however, with their hoodies on. And folks think that this is a show of power or a show of force. But I know, because I've been among those kids, it ultimately is fear.
The pioneers and missionaries of religion have been the real cause of more trouble and war than all other classes of mankind.
Do you remember you shot a seagull? A man came by chance, saw it and destroyed it, just to pass the time.
I have made myself what I am. And I would that I could make the red people as great as the conceptions of my own mind, when I think of the Great Spirit that rules over us all.
There was a little corner of his mind that was still his own, and light came through it, as though a chink in the dark: light out of the past. It was actually pleasant, I think, to hear a kindly voice agin, bringing up memories of wind, and trees, and sun on the grass, and such forgotten things.
Hatred. Something almost as physical as walls, pianos, or nurses. She could almost touch the destructive energy leaking out of her body. She allowed the feeling to emerge, regardless of whether it was good or bad; she was sick of self-control, of masks, of appropriate behavior. Veronika wanted to spend her remaining two or three days of life behaving as inappropriately as she could.
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