Global Courant 2023-05-29 21:32:40
Rumman Chowdhury, the former director of machine learning ethics, transparency and accountability at Twitter, said in a recent speech that she does not believe ethical artificial intelligence surveillance can exist.
“We can’t put lipstick on a pig,” noted the data scientist at New York University’s School of Social Sciences. “I don’t think ethical oversight can exist.”
In an interview published Monday in The Guardian – highlighting that statement – Chowdhury warned that the rise of surveillance capitalism is of great concern to her.
She claimed it is a use of technology that is essentially unequivocally racist and as such should not be entertained.
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Rumman Chowdhury, co-founder of Humane Intelligence, a nonprofit that develops responsible AI systems, poses for a photo at her home on Monday, May 8, 2023 in Katy, Texas. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
In a recent Wired opinion piece referenced in the piece, Chowdhury also said that only an outside council of humans can be trusted to govern AI.
“We’re getting all this media attention,” she told The Guardian, “and everyone’s like, ‘Who’s in charge?’ And then we all kind of look at each other and we’re like, ‘Um. Anyone?'”
In the interview, she complained about what she calls “moral outsourcing,” or redistributing responsibility for what’s built on the products themselves.
Her approach to regulation is that “mechanisms of accountability” must exist — and she says lack of accountability is a problem.
Rumman Chowdhury, co-founder of Humane Intelligence, a nonprofit that develops responsible AI systems, works at her computer in Katy, Texas, on Monday, May 8, 2023. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
“There’s just risk and then your willingness to take that risk,” she explained, stating that when the risk of failure gets too high, it goes into an arena where the rules are bent in a certain direction.
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“There are very few fundamentally good or bad actors in the world,” she continued. “People just operate on incentive structures.”
The Harvard University Responsible AI fellow said she wanted to bridge the gap of understanding between technologists who “don’t always understand people, and people[who]don’t always understand technology”.
“At the heart of technology is the idea that humanity is flawed and that technology can save us,” she said.
Sam Altman, CEO and co-founder of OpenAI, speaks at an event at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, on Tuesday, February 7, 2023. (Chona Kasinger/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Specifically, Chowdhury is working on a red-teaming event — encouraging hackers and programmers to try to curtail protections and push technology to do bad things — for Def Con, a convention hosted by the hacker organization AI Village . The “hackathon” is supported by industry leaders — including OpenAI, Google and Microsoft — and the Biden administration.
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She said she believes it is only through such collective efforts that proper regulation and enforcement can take place, though she cautioned that over-regulation could lead models to over-correct.
The outlet said Chowdhury added that it’s not easy to define what is poisonous or hateful.
“It’s a journey that will never end,” she said. “But I’m fine with that.”
Julia Musto is a reporter for Fox News and Fox Business Digital.
