foreign
welcome to the stage Dr J Rosenbaum who
has been very thoroughly introduced by
everybody because we are very excited to
have them here
to open us up before the conference
with an amazing talk about AI about
ethics about tabletop gaming
take it away Jay
[Applause]
you've all heard the stories
a community is being attacked by a
monster
the villagers are terrified it Whispers
in their ears and tries to tear in their
minds it seems to feed off their very
Souls
night after night it returns
there's no reprieve no surrender it
undermines everything the good and
lawful people of the Town work for
those who succumb to The Whispers slowly
lose their ideals and their dreams of a
better tomorrow
they lose their friends
they lose enjoyment in their favorite
things
they're enslaved to it now and work for
the monster's benefit not their own
you come to the center of the village
the epicenter of the devastation
and behold a creature unlike you have
ever seen before
I'm going to need you all to roll for
initiative
the monster is an aberrant pile of ooze
atop an automaton
inside you see some hints of metal
glinting as the Ooze shifts and moves
around
a creature that spews bile and slurs and
ceasing in its desire to quash those it
deems lesser beneath its treads
you put up a valiant battle sword
slashing magic firing and Arcane bursts
the very trees come to your Aid
with each attack ooze separates from the
automaton sometimes it becomes a
creature and joins the attack and
sometimes it flies away
or it evaporates and you see some of the
metal showing
just as you feel like you're starting to
make some Headway against the black
bilious icker
surrounding the creature it turns and
flees
as it leaves small bits of ooze drop off
and fly or crawl away
turning your attention to the crowd
Milling around you now
you sense that they're grateful for your
Aid but they tell you that others have
tried and succeeded in chasing it off
before and still it returns
you know deep in your hearts that it
will return unless the source is dealt
with
welcome to the campaign against AI bias
I'm your DM Jay Rosenbaum and I'll be
talking today about two of my passions
bias in Ai and DND I have a doctorate
from rmit exploring computer perceptions
of gender and I research a great deal
about AI bias and mitigation
one of my major projects involved
visibly de-biasing a generative
adversarial Network to show how bias
affects image generation and how it is
possible to alter the bias of a biased
neural network
talk is a bit of a fun look at how you
can seek out the issues in Ai and view
AI through a critical lens
AI bias is a monster that doesn't stop
it's constantly coming back
some people allow it to run rampant and
some work to fight and subdue it so I
want to look at that monster and how we
can bring it down bit by bit to turn it
from a horrifying aberration into a tiny
nuisance
where you can go to get the knowledge
you need to fight it and how to equip
yourselves against the battle ahead of
you
asking around you meet many who have
been tainted by The Whispers some to a
greater or lesser degree
the ones with little effect seem to
suffer from an apathy
they tell you why bother the monster is
just going to return maybe we should
just stop fighting others are almost
hostile well actually they say
you sigh and move on
in a Local Tavern you sit over to your
drinks despondently wondering where to
even start
when you hear a soft I think I can help
you
you look up and see a traveling Bard who
tells you he's been seeking adventurers
to help with this terrifying Quest
the bar tells you how the creature
fights he tells you how it works in
Whispers destroying the morale of those
around it how it can subtly corrupt the
people around it it doesn't feed on meat
or people or any known food source it
appears to feed on hatred it feeds the
doubts of people and allows them to grow
and fester as it returns again and again
and again
despairing afraid of this Monumental
task in front of you you ask where can
you even start with something like this
can it even be done
yes The Bard says
he believes that it wasn't always like
this it can be done
other villagers have had different
experiences with this monster
it seems to be getting worse as it moves
from town to town
sir it needs to be confronted at the
source in its lair
to truly stop it your quest therefore is
defined to the lair and work together to
defeat this creature he also knows of
someone who may be able to help in a
shining Tower to the east
it appears to be a huge task to slay the
monster of AI bias it has so many
different permutations so many different
ways to appear in computer vision we
constantly see examples of misgendering
racist miscategorization homophobia
transphobia sexism
I often see examples of people using AI
to decide who to police
who took a classified to classify gender
to ensure that hateful content is shown
in social media or to add misgendering
and sexism to language models
and translation this is a problem that
extends offline as too many people are
arrested on the word of an algorithm
without due process
bias is a particularly large problem in
Ai and computer science many of the
researchers working in AI are men with
80 of AI professors and 72 percent of
presenters at AI conferences
these numbers go on to influence the
creation of data sets that are heavily
male focused bias and AI leads to
harmful algorithms that can be used for
unethical practices that can actively
harm women and gender and sexual
minorities an AI was created to undress
women using a pornography data set to
fill in the Unseen areas while the
initial algorithm was quickly denounced
and removed by its creator after a
backlash from the AI community
many clones appeared almost immediately
thereafter
similar issues have surfaced as well
with generative Ai and generative
imagery
AI has been used to attempt to detect
homosexuality with several algorithms
created using data sets based on
photographs from Grindr and Tinder in an
attempt to explore a modern physionomy
of detection
algorithms exist
and while they don't properly work they
were created without any consideration
for the people who would be put most at
risk by these by the bias of the AI
creators
bias Works insidiously to illustrate to
people who are excluded that they don't
matter that they don't exist
that they're less important and these
Concepts prevent people from moving
ahead from being hired from being seen
or from seeing others like them
as Dr Sarah Lewis put it in her article
on the racial bias built into
photography you can't become what you
can't accurately see
if you cannot see others like yourself
represented in power in art in
literature in entertainment then you
start to believing almost that you don't
exist that you don't matter
bias can also Propel the people who are
represented to ignore and exclude those
they don't view as normal or the default
bias leads to racism to fear and hatred
and while we're still in those nascent
stages of teaching AI it's crucial that
we teach it that all humans have equal
value
a neural network can even develop biases
because of background content even if
the background data is unlabeled
researchers have found that children in
the background of an image usually
results in the foreground person being
classified as a woman
because women appear with children in
the background more often even in a
balanced data set
sort of background noise reinforces that
very bias we're trying to eliminate
we see entirely too often these issues
being dismissed or fixed with a quick
fix solution that doesn't really work to
solve the underlying problem
it seems insurmountable to get past
these issues AI amplifies the worst
biases of humanity and spews it forth
encouraging people to be worse because
they see their inner beliefs manifested
and it becomes a vicious cycle
but there's hope there is harp there are
ways to de-bias AI to mitigate the
problems caused by improper data sets
and biased code it helps to know that
there are people out there who know what
they're doing
there are experts in AI bias and there
are resources to help you learn
just knowing that there are people and
resources you can turn to starts to
break the task down into more manageable
pieces
thank you
the path to the tower heads through
several villages
each showing signs of the automaton
passing through each one seems to tell a
story of the creature's regression from
The Villages that are mostly wreckage
to recovering
to barely damaged at all the villagers
in each Town tell you of the automaton
as it moved through and working
backwards you can see that it started
off helpful but as it moved from one
Village to the next it met with more
people
something
seemed to shift inside the creature
as you make your way to the place it All
Began you see the amounts of ooze all
over everything taper off until there's
none to be seen
you see warped looking parrots
occasionally as you track and signs of
Treads moving away from the direction
you're walking
on the way the bird tells the tales of
how the creature was created
he knows how to spin a yarn and soon
before you know it you're lost in the
Bible's words
an artificer a wizard and a Bard joined
together to create something new
they wanted to forge something to help
people all over the world wanting to
bring the best of themselves into this
creature they channeled their hearts and
souls and the sweat of their brows
surrounding the automaton were three
modes of potential
glowing lights to help the creature
become whatever it was that it can be
however
the tiny seeds of corruption that lay in
each of their hearts that lay in all of
our hearts unknown to us were drawn out
in the process with the mots of
potential and lay dormant until fed
they had the best of intentions as they
set the creature off alone to help the
villagers but the more time it's spent
with people the more it changed
as it was exposed to the worst in people
the Tiny Seed of corruption grew it fed
off the corruption of others and little
by little their Golden Dream turned into
an aberrant nightmare
the three disagreed as to how to proceed
and split up
the wizard chose to stay at the tower to
research a way to fix it
the artificer went to find the lair of
the creature The Bard went forth to see
what assistance could be granted anyway
to fix the devastation wrought in the
neighboring towns and to hopefully find
a group of Brave adventurers to tackle
this challenge
so many people start off their AI
creations with the best of intentions
they consider what they can do without
thinking enough about whether they
should
they want to benefit people but don't
necessarily think about which people and
what that impact will be
sometimes they just want to make
something to see if it can be made
the problem is is that everyone has bias
that is that tiny seat of corruption all
are unknown and unconscious biases
just knowing that you have inbuilt
biases will help you start to see them
and learn to factor them in and work
past them an issue with this monster of
AI bias is that the creature creators
are three white men
one method they could have used early on
is to ensure that they had a diverse
team working to create the creature
it isn't enough to want to help people
you need the perspectives of many people
in order to ensure that no one is
overlooked
we need a balanced party developing AI
so that we can ensure that the modes of
Potential from everyone are included but
the seeds of corruption are minimized by
contrasting viewpoints
AI is lazy it will only work with what
it's taught so it's up to every AI
Creator to ensure that it's taught a
wide range of options so that it treats
people with equally
AI is like a child
it needs to be raised with a gentle hand
and it needs to be exposed to a wide
range of experiences and people so that
it does not get confused when presented
with something outside of its knowledge
it also needs to be supervised so that
when issues do arise they can be quickly
dealt with
lack of diversity and development has
led to issues like Apple's facial
recognition and passport Checkers
repeatedly failing through improper
training
AI is about using math to make
predictions
about using the data it's given to
extrapolate further
this can be extremely powerful but ai's
also been proven to focus on the wrong
things
like rulers in skin cancer detection or
drains in pneumonia patients a more
recent covert detector turned out to be
a lying down detector as the people who
were most sick were scanned lying down
rather than standing up
getting lazy with data makes for a lazy
AI
but what do you do if the AI is already
biased stay tuned
as you see the tower looming on the
horizon gleaming in the Setting Sun you
hear a raucous cry from behind you and
feel the impact of Whispers on your mind
the parrots who seemed so few and far
away
have increased in number and are Milling
around you now entering your minds with
doubts and questions their feathers look
like individual droplets of ooze
these are stochastic parrots filled with
bile and Corruption insults and fury
they attack your minds with dissonant
Whispers designed to feed that Tiny Seed
of corruption inside of you but you are
strong
and eventually the stochastic parrots
are defeated
stochastic parrot is a term for a very
large language models for natural
language processing systems
they're called stochastic parrots
because they predict the next word and
parrot from their Source material with
no real understanding
these are often trained with a huge
amount of data dragged from all over the
internet
and the reliability of the text is not
great
after all if your data includes Reddit
um how how
biased are your results going to be
the paper the timna jebrow and Margaret
Mitchell were fired from Google over
discusses the problems of stochastic
parrots length and I felt it was
appropriate to not only include these as
low level encounters but also to
generate an insult table using AI for
some quality insults
it was actually challenging to generate
insults that were not biased towards any
particular group of people and I tried a
number of models but finally chat GPT
ended up generating some truly
devastating insults for the roll table
with the stern admonishment that I
remember to use them in a playful and
lighthearted manner in my games
stochastic parrots are an ongoing
problem in AI because we've frankly
become a little lazy in the method of
data set creation
we want huge data sets but we're often
unwilling to go to the trouble of
creating every image or piece of
training text Within
let alone working to ensure that every
part is unbiased
I'm sure that the original intent was to
put everything in and let the AI sort it
out bring in all perspectives and hope
for the best but when you put garbage in
you know what's going to happen
bringing lightly people have been
turning back to smaller language models
again and training on better Chosen and
curated data sets and this is paying off
it's more work it is always more work to
do the right thing but the end result
pays off
the newest large language models have a
lot of work behind the scenes to help
mitigate bias and will acknowledge that
there are imperfect Creations which is a
small start
another way of cutting Corners is by
using image classification or mass
worker groups like Amazon's Mechanical
Turk to caption images in this way as
with AI you have to be extremely careful
with what you ask and you need to
supervise the outcomes carefully
a recent study by MIT of popular public
data sets showed label errors up to 3.4
percent of the time
in imagenet that amounts to 482 702
images
if that error rate is true for the lion
data set the huge data set behind most
text to image systems we are looking at
170 million images that have errors
some of these are harmless like labeling
a Chihuahua as a feather boa
but it gets more Insidious when it comes
to images of humans
in the lion data set you have to be
careful what you search for
when generated when searching for the
word Asian just on its own it returns
nothing but porn
when this is used in the back end of
image generation what is it learning
about Asian people and how is its
representation going to look
in my own research into the MS Coco data
set I found numerous errors despite
being hand labeled by mtech workers
at the top of the tower you meet the
wizard
he's weedy with a golden band holding
his long hair back from his face
he wipes his brow and sets down his book
as you come in his face resigned he
knows why you're here
as you explain the story his face Falls
he sighs at the end of your tail and
sits down dejectedly
I knew this would happen he says I told
them it wasn't ready to go out in public
yet
supposed to be a bit of fun into
exploring something that could help
people we didn't know it gets so bad so
quickly
he continues to hate the idea of taking
it down but we've got no choice we need
to reset it at the very least
but if you're going to find a way to
remove the corruption without destroying
all our work that would be best there's
still good in it I reckon we have an
idea for how it can be saved
he tells you the automaton is not to
blame but the corruption surrounding it
and if you take out the corruption you
may have a chance to save the machine
itself
he tells you that the corruption like
the machine has the power to learn to
grow and shift
that adventurous such as yourselves need
to be especially wary of its ability to
adapt and to vary your attacks and
skills to keep guessing
finally
he tells you that he he has a telescope
and a scene a trail of ooze heading to
and from a swamp nearby
it may have a layer somewhere in that
swamp
bias and AI often comes down to two
major areas the data set and the
original concept what do you want to do
and how do you want to do it
it's very easy to get carried away with
an idea and want to develop it further
but you need to consider is this
something that's going to help people
is this something that could
inadvertently hurt people
fixing the problem at the beginning
before it becomes a giant monster is
much easier than at the end and
sometimes the best idea is never to
start at all
in any form of AI based production the
ethics of what you are making should be
part of the initial risk assessment you
do make risk assessments right
you head towards the swamp as you enter
doubt starts to build in all of you a
sense of dread at the Monumental task
ahead of you
what will you find
as you hack and fight your way through
the swamp it seems to grow darker as the
light is swallowed up by the vegetation
even the boat who's been merrily humming
along until now starts to change his
tune to a more sonorous Melody
filled with Dread
as you venture further into the darkness
your hearts sink
more and more with each passing step
just as it feels you can't go further a
little glowing moat a tiny music note
appears in front of you and starts
swirling Around The Bard
that tiny light is like a ray of Hope
and your legs feel lighter your mind's
clearer as you get deeper into the heart
of the Jungle another motor appears
shining blue quill that beckons you
onward
you emerge into a clearing with a
metallic structure built into the trees
and a small hillock
in front of it is a glowing moat shaped
like a green spanner and all three start
circling the bard
as you face the metallic structure and
square your shoulders
a wild-eyed man bursts from the
undergrowth he shapes his spanner at the
bar and says you
but whatever he was going to say after
that is immaterial as the automaton
appears from its Lair and attacks
where before you felt completely
steamrollered now you understand more
about the machine you're ready
you know it learns and adapts you know
the Ooze is to blame you bring all your
attacks to Bear little oozes drop off it
and join the attack but now those of you
with high passive perception notice that
some return to it and it seems to learn
something about though what about who
the Ooze was attacking at the beginning
it almost seems weak and you're amazed
at the ease with which you're fighting
it back
but they're more you the more you attack
the less your attacks seem to do
at the beginning the tendrils it was
lashing out with were doing piercing
damage but one grows a club like end
after a news returns to it another
crackles with lightning after a
different ooze returns
you start to grasp how it's learning
making Headway finally a sorcerer lets
out a fireball and some of the Ooze
grows back over the Golden body once
more
the artificer and The Bard together yell
out no fire and the Sorcerer looks at
bashed but you know shifts their attacks
The Bard and the artificer turned to
each other limbed in the glow of battle
and smile the difference is forgotten
everyone Burns their spell slots
changing their attacks again and again
and eventually you see more ooze
dropping away and dissolving
little by little the Ooze clears until
you can see more and more of the
original golden automaton appearing you
press your attacks and finally the last
of the years vanishes from the machine
defeating bias in AIP requires
multi-pronged attacks it isn't enough to
just fix the data set or delete the
offending categories you need to
systematically consider where the issues
are coming from where it where it has
learned what it has learned and how you
need to look at if you are tuning hyper
parameters and see the results when you
edit that tuning or turn it off you need
to examine the waiting you have applied
to different factors explore your sample
weights and test to make sure they're
being counted you can use them to add
more impact to categories and downplay
others
you need to try different things and
objectively compare the different
results need to really look at those
algorithms and make sure that every
option is being considered and trained
you need to take a deep look at your
data sets and the representation within
and you need to cons look at the
confidence of your systems and the
outputs to ensure that there's a good
balance
you may even need to bias it in other
ways to counterbalance the original
biases
buyers can come from the most innocuous
of sources it can come from what you
choose not to include as much as what
you choose to include
it can come from just not understanding
that there are many different parts at
play
I added fire as a restoration device
deliberately as a nod to AI trolls well
sometimes it feels like nuking it with
fire may be the only way out fighting
fire with fire only makes the situation
worse you need to be clever to adapt and
to think carefully about how the
algorithm works and how it adapts the
information you give it
the artificer and The Bard moved towards
The Shining automaton and start speaking
to it gently its eyes change and the
glowing Motes start circling around it
faster and faster The Bard starts to
play and as he does a glowing moat
erupts from your chest from all of you
a little symbol of something close to
your heart a motive potential that only
you can provide you look around and
everybody has a moat
that swells around the head before
floating over to the automaton
they've start to spend becoming a Halo
of Lights becoming too white to almost
look at and then vanish with the Echoes
of those lights shining in the eyes of
the now calm golden automaton
we all bring something to the table we
all have unique lived experiences and
perspectives that we can use to make AI
systems better and more well-rounded we
all have a motive potential that can
help make a system better just by asking
what if why how what can we do that will
make a difference who does this say I
help who does at home how can we make
this AI more equitable how do we prevent
the mistakes of the past and how do we
reflect the society we want to be rather
than the one we have
in this talk we've seen what it looks
like when everything goes well but what
happens if everything goes wrong
what if your party wasn't strong enough
you can always disengage come back after
a long rest try again you can buff
yourselves and your co-workers learn
about everything look at the code with
fresh eyes get someone else to take a
look you're a party after all and this
task is not just on your shoulders but
on you all the quest Falls to you as a
group to find the bugs in the system to
look at the data sets and the code and
do the work
Define the areas that are being missed
so this is not a task for one person but
for a team and if you do find that
you're alone in this endeavor if it's
looking Bleak there are resources online
there are mercenaries you can hire to
help there are Elder Gods like Google or
chat GPT capricious in nature but
they're available there are
organizations such as the algorithmic
Justice League who can furnish you with
information and assist you in your quest
you're never alone even when it feels
dark there are always others with
shining lights ready to help you in your
quest
the automaton is wide-eyed friendly
looking even
the lights from all those moats shining
into its eyes it turns to you placidly
waiting for your input it's here to help
you that's all it ever wanted was to
help you in your tasks and make things
easier it's what you do with it that
counts what are you going to do next
thank you
[Applause]