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Decoder with Nilay Patel

Recode Decode: Meredith Whittaker and Kate Crawford

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Vox Media Podcast Network

Technology, Business

4.33.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 April 2019

⏱️ 60 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

AI Now Institute founders Meredith Whittaker and Kate Crawford talk with Recode's Kara Swisher about artificial intelligence in this live interview recorded at the Studio Theatre in Washington, DC. In this episode: What is the AI Now Institute?; how "dirty data" can lead to faulty AI conclusions; how machine learning works; the “whack-a-mole” problem of biased search results; the politics of AI; diversity in computer science; what systems should not be run by humans?; Amazon's résumé-scanning AI failure; how the industry is trying to regulate itself and “ethics theater”; which federal agency should monitor AI in the US?; China’s creepy “social credit score”; the ways facial recognition and other invasions of privacy are creeping into the US, too; the Google walkout and protecting whistleblowers inside tech companies; and why Elon Musk is wrong about AI’s dangers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

When you drive a Chevy electric vehicle, you're getting more than a way to get from point A to point B.

0:06.0

You're saying goodbye to gas stations and how low to open roads.

0:09.0

With the growing network of public charging stations, you'll be able to charge your EV while you shop, work, or do whatever you want to be doing with your time.

0:17.0

Chevy is making EVs for everyone, everywhere. Go to chevrelay.com slash electric to learn more.

0:24.0

Sabotage hired goons and a landfill in Utah.

0:32.0

How Steve Jobs' revolutionary catastrophe of a computer, the Apple Lisa, earned a brief second life, and then was buried for good.

0:42.0

Watch the Verges documentary, Lisa's final act, now on YouTube.

0:48.0

Hi, I'm Karras Swisher, Editor-at-large of Recode.

0:52.0

You may know me as someone who's both intelligent and artificial, but in my spare time I talk tech, and you're listening to Recode decode from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

1:00.0

Today in the red chairs, our Kate Crawford and Meredith Whitaker, the co-founders of the AI Now Institute, is a research institute at New York University that studies the social implications of artificial intelligence.

1:13.0

Even if you don't realize it, Whitaker said AI is already having effect on our day-to-day lives.

1:18.0

You know, there are license plate profiling AI that is sort of tracking people as they go over different bridges in New York.

1:25.0

You have systems that are determining which school your child gets enrolled in.

1:30.0

You have automatic essay scoring systems that are determining whether it's written well enough, like, you know, whose version of written English is that.

1:38.0

Crawford said one of the challenges facing AI is the prevalence of what she calls dirty data, like the kind that was being used to inform a predictive policing initiative.

1:48.0

So we ended up looking at 13 jurisdictions across the US that were specifically under legal orders because of biased or illegal or unconstitutional policing.

1:58.0

The data that was being created by things like planting evidence or racially biased policing was being piped into predictive policing systems.

2:06.0

We found multiple cases, Chicago being one of the most obvious.

2:09.0

We also talked about AI in China, diversity in computer science, and why Elon Musk is wrong about AI's danger.

2:16.0

Sorry, Elon, we recorded this interview in front of a live audience at the studio theater in Washington, D.C.

2:22.0

So let's go there now to hear my interview with the founders of the AI Now Institute, Kate Crawford, and Meredith Whitaker.

2:30.0

We're having a competitive leather coat situation here.

...

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