Who is to blame for the cons of AI…

AI (Artificial Intelligence) has been a big deal for the last few decades. Its multifaceted benefits in almost every aspect of human activities are undeniable and extraordinary. As with everything in this world, AI has its cons as well.

Yeah, AI is bad if we don’t use it wisely. I am not talking about the superficial and superstitious conspiracy theories about robots controlling the world and outsmarting humans. That’s a long shot and farfetched. I even doubt our abilities to code for robots to be smarter than us.

I am talking about its effects based on the social structure. I am talking about a surveillance system being suspicious of a black person for a crime committed around. I am talking about a program helping in recruiting a Software Engineer for a job giving an unfair advantage to a white man.

These and other disadvantages of Artificial Intelligence harm minority groups in every country. It’s argued by many AI researchers like Dr. Timnit Gebru that AI algorithms shall be fair for everyone. And they propose a standard dataset datasheet to train a model of an algorithm.

My perception of the problem and the things I present as solutions are much different from the above one. I think the cons of AI don’t lie merely in the dataset we use to train a particular model. And I argue that we shouldn’t be blaming only the Data Scientist or Machine Learning Engineer for this kind of problem.

I say these problems have their roots in the real world. I say Systemic Racism has a lot to do with these issues. White Supremacy and crooked politics have got everything to do with this. This reminds me of the song Guns & Drugs by Ice Cube. Let me illustrate a couple of verses of the song:

They give us guns and drugs

Then wonder why in the f*ck we thugs

It’s only fair to blame the politicians instead of the professionals. Although the Data Scientists and ML Engineers should be cautious and responsible for the methods they follow and the datasets they use to train the model and be accountable for what they did.

With that said I want to address that it’s everyone’s responsibility to make the world a better and fair place to live in. Let’s be united and fight racism. Let’s be good to each other and stop evaluating others based on their color, ethnicity, gender, or any other qualitative metrics. Stay Safe!

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(Inspired by the works of Dr. Timnit Gebru)