Chalk Radio Podcast - The Human Element in Machine Learning w Catherine D’Ignazio, Jacob Andreas & Harini Suresh (S3:E5)

When computer science was in its infancy, programmers quickly realized that though computers are astonishingly powerful tools, the results they achieve are only as good as the data you feed into them. (This principle was quickly formalized as GIGO: “Garbage In, Garbage Out.”) What was true in the era of the UNIVAC has proved still to be true in the era of machine learning: among other well-publicized AI fiascos, chatbots that have interacted with bigots have learned to spew racist invective, while facial-recognition software trained solely on images of white people sometimes fails to recognize people of color as human. In this episode, we meet Prof. Catherine D’Ignazio of MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) and Prof. Jacob Andreas and Harini Suresh of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. In 2021, D’Ignazio, Andreas, and Suresh collaborated as part of the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing initiative from the Schwartzman College of Computing in a project to teach computer science students in 6.864 Natural Language Processing to recognize how deep learning systems can replicate and magnify the biases inherent in the data sets that are used to train them. Relevant Resources: MIT OpenCourseWare https://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=shownotes&utm_campaign=chalkradio&utm_term=s3e5 The OCW Educator Portal https://ocw.mit.edu/educator?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=shownotes&utm_campaign=chalkradio&utm_term=s3e5 Share your teaching insights https://forms.gle/XBwUwqn35abSdjNs8 Case Studies in Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-tll-007-case-studies-in-social-and-ethical-responsibilities-of-computing-fall-2021/? utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=shownotes&utm_campaign=chalkradio&utm_term=s3e5 SERC website https://computing.mit.edu/cross-cutting/social-and-ethical-responsibilities-of-computing/ Professor D’Ignazio’s faculty page https://dusp.mit.edu/faculty/catherine-dignazio Professor Andreas’s faculty page https://www.csail.mit.edu/person/jacob-andreas Harini Suresh’s personal website http://harinisuresh.com Desmond Patton’s paper on analysis of communications on Twitter https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/326834185.pdf Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions https://www.sessions.blue Connect with Us If you have a suggestion for a new episode or have used OCW to change your life or those of others, tell us your story. We’d love to hear from you! Call us @ 617-715-2517 On our site https://ocw.mit.edu/about/contactus/ On Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MITOCW/ On Twitter https://twitter.com/MITOCW On Instagram https://www.instagram.com/accounts/login/ Stay Current Subscribe to the free monthly "MIT OpenCourseWare Update" e-newsletter. https://ocw.mit.edu/subscribe/index.htm?utm_source=header Support OCW If you like Chalk Radio and OpenCourseWare, donate to help keep those programs going! https://giving.mit.edu/give/to/ocw/?utm_source=ocw&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=donate Credits Sarah Hansen, host and producer (https://twitter.com/learning_sarah) Brett Paci, producer (https://twitter.com/Brett_Paci) Dave Lishansky, producer (https://twitter.com/DaveResonates) Script writing assistance by Aubrey Calaway Show notes by Peter Chipman