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Daily Archives: November 24, 2022

Glass Box Artificial Intelligence in Criminal Justice

Garrett, Brandon L. and Rudin, Cynthia and Rudin, Cynthia, Glass Box Artificial Intelligence in Criminal Justice (November 14, 2022). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4275661 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4275661 “As we embrace data-driven technologies across a wide range of human activities, policymakers and researchers increasingly sound alarms regarding the dangers posed by “black box” uses of artificial intelligence (AI) to society, democracy, and individual rights. Such models are either too complex for people to understand or they are designed so that their functioning is inaccessible. This lack of transparency can have harmful consequences for the people affected. One central area of concern has been the criminal justice system, in which life, liberty, and public safety can be at stake. Judges have struggled with government claims that AI, such as that used in DNA mixture interpretation, risk assessments, facial recognition, and predictive policing, should remain a black box that is not disclosed to the defense and in court. Both the champions and critics of AI have argued we face a central trade-off: black box AI sacrifices interpretability for predictive accuracy. We write to counter this black box myth. We describe a body of computer science research showing “glass box” AI that is interpretable can be more accurate. Indeed, criminal justice data is notoriously error prone, and unless AI is interpretable, those errors can have grave hidden consequences. Our intervention has implications for constitutional criminal procedure rights. Judges have been reluctant to impair perceived effectiveness of black box AI by insisting on the disclosures defendants should be constitutionally entitled to receive. Given the criminal procedure rights and public safety interests at stake, it is especially important that people can understand AI. More fundamentally, we argue that there is no necessary tradeoff between the benefits of AI and the vindication of constitutional rights. Indeed, glass box AI can better accomplish both fairness and public safety goals.”

Billionaires Provided 15 Percent of Funding for the Midterm

“In the 2022 midterms, the 100 largest donors collectively spent 60 percent more than every small donor in the United States combined, according to a Brennan Center analysis of publicly available data. (Small donors are those who give $200 or less.) The wealthy have always wielded disproportionate power over American government. In 1895, GOP strategist… Continue Reading

The End of Roe v Wade and New Legal Frontiers on the Constitutional Right to Abortion

Cohen, I. Glenn and Murray, Melissa and Gostin, Lawrence O., The End of Roe v Wade and New Legal Frontiers on the Constitutional Right to Abortion (July 8, 2022). The Journal of the American Medical Association, published online July 8, 2022, at E1-E2. (2022). Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works. 2460. DOI No.: 10.1001/jama.2022.12397… Continue Reading

Google has a secret new project that is teaching artificial intelligence to write and fix code

The Insider – “It could reduce the need for human engineers in the future. Google is working on a secretive project that uses machine learning to train code to write, fix, and update itself. This project is part of a broader push by Google into so-called generative artificial intelligence, which uses algorithms to create images,… Continue Reading

The Woks of Life Is Shaping Chinese Home Cooking in America. And It’s Only Getting Started

bon appetit – “Since 2013, the Leungs have published hundreds of recipes that now receive millions of views every month, and they’ve solidified their reputation as a trusted resource with detailed guides that walk home cooks through the necessary equipment and ingredients to make their dishes. Over the years, they’ve garnered a cult-like following among… Continue Reading

IAPP-EY Annual Privacy Governance Report 2022

Published: November 2022 View Executive Summary (PDF)  – View Full Report (Members-Only) “This report is meant to serve as a point-in-time “check-in” for the privacy profession. What does the average privacy office look like in 2022? We asked our global membership to complete the 29-question governance survey. Over the course of 10 weeks, more than… Continue Reading

‘Opening the gates of hell’: Musk says he will revive banned accounts

Washington Post [title should be “reopening the gates of hell” – “Elon Musk plans to reinstate nearly all previously banned Twitter accounts — to the alarm of activists and online trust and safety experts. After posting a Twitter poll asking, “Should Twitter offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken… Continue Reading

A CERN Model for Studying the Information Environment

“Researchers, governments, and civil society must come together to help. This paper explores how CERN can serve as a model for developing the Institute for Research on the Information Environment (IRIE).By connecting disciplines and providing shared engineering resources and capacity-building across the world’s democracies, IRIE will scale up applied research to enable evidence-based policymaking and… Continue Reading