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VICE cites Laura Forlano’s 2020 paper; “Participation Is Not a Design Fix for Machine Learning”

December 31, 2022

How ‘AI Isn’t Artificial or Intelligent’

ID Associate Professor Laura Forlano discusses how AI innovation is often powered by underpaid workers in foreign countries. At VICE, she explores the implications of utilizing human labor in lieu of responsible design: 

 

I think one of the mythologies around AI computing is that they actually work as intended. I think right now, what human labor is compensating for is essentially a lot of gaps in the way that the systems work.
—Laura Forlano, Associate Professor of Design

The article cites Forlano’s 2020 paper, “Participation Is Not a Design Fix for Machine Learning,” delving into how computer scientists are struggling to fix systemic issues with AI and critiquing human labor-based approaches to fill the gaps that machine learning cannot yet support.

One of the logical conclusions that a computer scientist might come to is that if you just add more and correct data to the systems that ultimately they will become better. But that in itself is a fallacy. No amount of data is going to fix the systems.
—Laura Forlano, Associate Professor of Design

Read more about the critique of AI and machine learning here. Read the paper Laura Forlano co-authored here.

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