The company said on Wednesday that it will use the findings to improve the experience on Twitter: The move comes amid mounting concerns around social media algorithms amplifying biases and spreading conspiracy theories. [Read: The biggest tech trends of 2021, according to 3 founders] A recent example of this on Twitter involved an image cropping algorithm that automatically prioritized white faces over Black ones.
Which will the Twitter algorithm pick: Mitch McConnell or Barack Obama? pic.twitter.com/bR1GRyCkia — Tony “Abolish ICE” Arcieri ? (@bascule) September 19, 2020 Twitter said the image-cropping algorithm will be analyzed by the Responsible ML team. They’ll also conduct a fairness assessment of Twitter’s timeline recommendations across racial subgroups, and study content recommendations for different political ideologies in seven countries.
Cautious optimism
Tech firms are often accused of using responsible AI initiatives to divert criticism and regulatory intervention. But Twitter’s new project has attracted praise from AI ethicists. Margaret Mitchell, who co-led Google’s ethical AI time before her controversial firing in February, commended the initiative’s approach.
— MMitchell (@mmitchell_ai) April 14, 2021 Twitter’s recent hiring of Rumman Chowdhury has also given the project some credibility. Chowdhury, a world-renowned expert in AI ethics, was appointed director of ML Ethics, Transparency & Accountability (META) at Twitter in February. In a blog post, she said Twitter will share the learnings and best practices from the initiative: She added that her team is building explainable ML solutions to show how the algorithms work. They’re also exploring ways to give users more control over how ML shapes their experience. Not all the work will translate into product changes, but it will hopefully at least provide some transparency into how Twitter’s algorithms work. Greetings Humanoids! Did you know we have a newsletter all about AI? You can subscribe to it right here.
