Data, Tech & Black Communities

Today, technical experts hold the tools to conduct system-scale algorithm audits, so they largely decide what algorithmic harms are surfaced. Our #cscw2022 paper asks: how could *everyday users* explore where a system disagrees with their perspectives?

Warnings vulnerable people in danger of being ‘unfairly penalised’ by AI system

A sweeping AI has become central to how the US handles the opioid crisis. It may only be making the crisis worse. With the creeping privatisation of our National Health Services, could the U.K. see similar opaque algorithms creating barriers here?

These are the four most popular misconceptions people have about race & gender bias in algorithms.I'm wary of wading into this conversation again, but it's important to acknowledge the research that refutes each point, despite it feeling counter-intuitive.Let me clarify.👇🏾 https://t.co/WdzmnGLaFm— Deb Raji (@rajiinio) March 27, 2021

Proctored exams have a bias toward students from racial minorities and other disadvantaged groups.

This paper raises questions on the use of ML and statistical modelling in general to predict life outcomes for an individual.

"Any data scientist working to automate issues of a social nature, in effect, is engaged in making moral and ethical decisions – they are not simply dealing with purely technical work but with a practice that actively impacts individual people." - Abeba Birhane

A growing group of lawyers are uncovering, navigating, and fighting the automated systems that deny the poor housing, jobs, and basic services. Increasingly, the fight over a client’s eligibility now involves some kind of algorithm. “In some cases, it probably should just be shut down because there’s no way to make it equitable,”

Arrest data biases predictive tools because police are known to arrest more people in Black and other minority neighborhoods, which leads algorithms to direct more policing to those areas, which leads to more arrests. The result is that predictive tools misallocate police patrols: some neighborhoods are unfairly designated crime hot spots while others are underpoliced.

Sally Collier to appear before education select committee over A-levels and GCSE results debacle. Use of algorithms disproportionately affected poorer and Black communities.

After a legal challenge to the automatic algorithm, the UK will "redesign" its visa process. The Home Office has agreed to stop using a computer algorithm to help decide visa applications after allegations that it contained "entrenched racism".

A Home Office-funded project that used artificial intelligence to predict gun and knife crime was found to be wildly inaccurate. “Basing our arguments on inaccuracy is problematic because the tech deficiencies are solvable through time. Even if the algorithm was set to be 100 percent accurate, there would still be bias in this system.”

As we hand over decision-making regarding social issues to automated systems developed by profit-driven corporates, not only are we allowing our social concerns to be dictated by the profit incentive, but we are also handing over moral and ethical questions to the corporate world, argues ABEBA BIRHANE

Colonialism in the age of Artificial Intelligence takes the form of “state-of-the-art algorithms” and “AI driven solutions” unsuited to African problems, and hinders the development of local products, leaving the continent dependent on Western software and infrastructure.