TECH
Why AI Is Bad for Black People and Minorities
And what to do about it
AI is the hottest topic around right now. And since I’m working in tech, I can say something about it. AI is cool. It’s doing serendipity because it is a complex system. It’s giving unexpected results.
Magic? It scares leaders right now. But AI is here to stay.
What is AI? Artificial Intelligence. It’s the bots you speak to when you have a complaint. Or it’s a digital twin telling us about flows in cities. In fact, it’s a machine learning system. The core is designed. The rest is learning.
What can we say about Generative AI? Examples are Dalle-E now. And ChatGPT. And other Open AI designs.
Generative design generates pictures and texts from what it already knows. It learns from what it is fed. Like my May (5) learns from what I feed her.
History is a large part of the future it tells you about. A bit like genes. History crystallized. Without any thought for epigenetics, nurture, or development during life depending on environments.
Genetics is the code. Epigenetics is the expression of the code… During life, genes can be switched on and off based on environmental stuff and emotions. It’s just the biology of the human species.
So, if we add these things up in AI and all stories will be created in an echo chamber of historic stories, what do we get?
More of what we already had
And if we link that to black women? Well, that’s where the echo chamber becomes nasty. We are robbing black women of healthy role models.
White men are doctors way longer than black women are.
So a doctor in your AI story will always be HE.
And the nurse in your AI picture will be a white SHE.
No more positive role models for black girls. A criminal will often be a black person. That’s what our stories in this f**ked up world say right now. So AI will echo it. Until someone feeds AI new stories.
Stories about brave, black young women who are doctors. And astronauts. And scientists. And deep sea divers. Biologists. And land owners. And rich entrepreneurs. Can we give those stories to AI, please?
People like boxes. People like everyone to stay in their box. Otherwise, the world gets confused. Well, that’s too bad for all of you. The world IS complex and confusing. And people have many unexpected sides when you get to know them better.
So, let’s do just that. Get to know them better…
Dive deeper!
Brene Brown
What do you show to the world? Do you only show the expected? The cliché? The happy, lovey-dovey, filtered stories?
Instagram has the idea that filters will attract watchers to your account. They want to be you. And just that is toxic. It will make other people miserable. We are a copying, superficial, and comparing species.
And our brains will feel misery and scarcity extra badly.
What will happen is that others wanna be like your filtered picture and they wonder why their own life seems so boring… They get anorexia. Or depression. Or another mental illness.
We feed each other mental illnesses through social media… And we love it! What does that sound like… sure… addiction!
I remember the first book of Brene Brown I read. And she tells how her name is normally a black name. What will people have thought? Ahhhhh… lucky… she’s white after all?
Most probably yes, they will have thought that. Because the cliches are that white people are smarter than black people. How could this social researcher be black? The cliché is that Asians have an even bigger brain. We attach characteristics to names. To religions (Jews are shrewd traders). And to faces.
Designing Anonymous Systems
So, what is there to do for a coder and systems designer?
The Spatial Web is all about designing coded systems for privacy and energy efficiency. We can design all systems anonymously in layers.
AI is meant for analytics. Well, analyze the big flows without names or faces. Leaders can easily make good decisions then. And be surprised what face or name is their best bet.
Only when really necessary, we connect a number to a name. Everyone may choose what they share with whom and for how long.
Your data will be on local routers. Your identity again owned by YOU. Let’s have everywhere anonymous systems. Anonymous job applications. Anonymous childcare benefits. To prevent the Dutch childcare benefit scandal. And many other scandals to do with identity.
Do you know what a great extra advantage of anonymous systems would be?
Imagine you are in HR. And you have no pictures, no ages, no genders, no names. You just invite people based on their skills, experiences, and references.
And then, you meet the ones you chose.
And they will be surprised by ME? Black mum polymath.
And I turn out to be surprisingly fitting for your job. But not at all what you expected in appearance. Your advantage is that you get way more diverse teams.
And we all know that diverse teams give us better innovations. We also know that right now attractive people get way more opportunities for personal development than ugly ones. Showing faces in systems gives attractive people a head start. Is that good for equality? Equity?
“Noted economist Daniel Hamermesh shows that the attractive are more likely to be employed, work more productively and profitably, receive more substantial pay, obtain loan approvals, negotiate loans with better terms, and have more handsome and highly educated spouses.”
My advice: design systems to be anonymous!
In Web3 that’s easy. Elements like edge computing on local routers and distributed systems will even prevent phishing for data. A phisher will have to become a pickpocket instead of having the chance for bank robbery.
Happiness, equity, and prevention of robbery are all in the design of the systems. Go Web 3.0 with the Spatial Web.
How Do You Use AI?
It’s important that you keep your critical thinking muscles alive and kicking. Keep your radar intact. Always use your common sense. And on this platform? Give me and my buddies the counter-intuitive, upside-down stories.
The world needs upside-down stories!
Even if only for AI. Correcting the wrong cliches.
How about the elephant at the top of my story?
Do you know the story of the blind men and the elephant?
“Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant’s body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the elephant based on their limited experience and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other. In some versions of the fable, they come to suspect that the other person is dishonest and they come to blows. The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people’s limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true” — Wikipedia
Their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other
The elephant is true. But they don’t see the full spectrum.
Recently, Melanie J. gave me a wise comment: “I do not believe in absolute truth anymore.”
I told her: “I’m thinking about that very often these days. Do we see the same things in a different light? Do we think the other is always wrong and we are right, just to please our egos?”
What if we are ALL right? And we just think the others are not?
It would be logical that we are all looking at the same horizon from different angles. We all had different history lessons in school. We all have different experiences in life.
The only absolute truth is that we are a human species spinning on a rock through the universe with 1037 miles per hour. We are all one species. And our world got so safe from snakes and spiders that we only know how to see other humans as enemies. We don’t FEEL deeper anymore…
Think about all this for a bit and then let me have your comment. And the counter-intuitive stories of course.
Tag me! I’ll read your stories!
All I can say is, don’t be a blind man or woman or any other blind gender. Don’t be a blind bat. Or a blind mole. Look where you are going. I might be coming around the corner racing my forklift truck… hahaha…
Who’d expect a black woman coder on a forklift truck?
But I really do like my work. My colleagues. The adrenaline of deadlines. There’s so much you don’t know about me (yet). And I don’t know about you. We are all made up of many bits and pieces…
Don’t be a blind bat. Think for yourself. And dive deeper.
And most of all with AI, expect the unexpected.
Black Mums for President
Buy me a coffee. Or let’s have a chat.