We and AI: Investigating the Invisible

Peju spoke about a neural network that researchers at the University of Toronto taught to write a Christmas carol: https://digg.com/video/ai-christmas-carol

Kevin mentioned a team at MIT who used an algorithm called textgnrnn to create titles and plots for Christmas films. Find out more about it here: https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/12/21/138169/we-tried-teaching-an-ai-to-write-christmas-movie-plots-hilarity-ensued-eventually/

Special holiday thanks to our contributors:

• Louis Columbus
  
• Helen Gould
  
• Dr Robert Elliott Smith
  
• Deepak Paramanand
  
• Phillip Hunter
  
• Brhmie Balaram
  
• Eline Chivot
  
• Umang Patel
  
• Saint Nicholas was voiced by Harry Burton: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0123593/
  
• Our festive backing music is by Linda Seeley; https://lindakseeley.wixsite.com/lindakseeley
  

This episode was co-produced by Laura Robinson and Kevin Butler

Hosts: Kevin Butler and Peju Oshisanya

Sound engineer: Michael O'Reilly

Jingle written by: Michael O'Reilly

This podcast has been produced by an independent partner of We and AI and may not represent the views or practices of We and AI as an organisation, or that of its members.

Peju talks about Alexa usage rates increasing during lockdown, and there is statistical evidence of that: according to a survey by Voxly Digital in April 2020, 3 in 5 users agreed that their voice-assistant is helping them get through isolation (however, it is worth noting that Voxly Digital produce apps for Amazon Alexa and Google assistant).

By the end of the episode you might even be questioning Kevin and Peju. For example when talking about male versus female voice assistants, are we stuck in thinking that a machine should have the characteristics of a human, and how dangerous is it to project human attributes on them? Should voice assistants be gender neutral, and should we stop thinking of them as versions of ourselves? Find out more about this issue on our blog: https://weandai.org/blog/

ENDS

• ‘Bank of England economist warns thousands of UK jobs at risk from robots and AI’ published in the Independent, Monday 20th August 2018
• Job Loss From AI? There's More To Fear!, Forbes.com Aug 7, 2018
• A.I. and Unemployment: Which Cities Face Biggest Impact, Dice.com November 21, 2019

Notes on the Amazon case study

The software was created by a team at Amazon’s Edinburgh office in 2014 as a way to automatically sort through CVs and select the most ‘talented’ applicants.

But the algorithm taught itself to favour male candidates over female ones

The problem seemed to have been caused by bad data. The system was trained on data submitted by applicants over a 10-year period – most of which came from men.

It was started in 2014 and scrapped by Amazon in 2015 — so five years ago rather than 6 as Kevin said.

You can find out more about the Amazon here: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight-idUSKCN1MK08G

21 jobs of the future

The article we were talking about was the ‘21 HR jobs of the future’ published in August 2020 in the Harvard Business Review

Authors are Rob Brown from the Cognizant Center for the Future of Work and Jeanne Mesiter who is the Managing Partner of Future Workplace — both organisations that deal in predicting the future of jobs.

Find the article here: https://www.cognizant.com/whitepapers/21-jobs-of-the-future-a-guide-to-getting-and-staying-employed-over-the-next-10-years-codex3049.pdf

McKinsey study

Kevin mentions a Mckinsey study, Skill shift: Automation and the future of the workforce

For more information about the issues discussed in this episode, take a look at our blog post on: https://weandai.org/blog/

Angela is an independent British science journalist and author. She’s probably best known for her documentaries on the BBC, and her two books on the history of science, including her most recent: Superior: The Return of Race Science.

Rob is the CTO of Mirza, a company developing tech to help close the gender pay gap.

He’s also Senior Fellow of the Computer Science Faculty at University College London — and excitingly, he’s just published a book: Rage Inside the Machine: The Prejudice of Algorithms and How to Stop The Internet Making Bigots of Us All.

With Angela and Rob on-hand to help, we’re ready to delve into the most important topic surrounding AI today. Are you ready to follow us?

References

Peju mentioned the GCSE grading scandal which occurred when algorithms were used to determine GCSE and A-level results in August of 2020.

Angela mentioned Data, a fictional character in the TV show Star Trek.

Angela mentions a book by Jennifer Eberhart, Biased: Uncovering the hidden prejudice that shapes what we see, think and do.

Kevin mentions the famous example of Amazon’s failed AI recruiting tool (find out more about this on our AI and Jobs episode).

Rob mentions the science fiction novel The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's by American writer Neal Stephenson, which describes artificial intelligence as ‘pseudo intelligence’.

For a more detailed discussion of the themes that emerge in this episode, read our blog post at https://weandai.org/blog/