Artificial Intelligence and Fairness
The prominence of big data analytics raises problems at many levels.
- Their advertised predictive power encourages the collection of the kind of data that tends to compromise privacy: high frequency, non-aggregated transactional data.
- The datasets they are trained on often have inherent biases arising from implicit factors, selection and reporting.
- The algorithms themselves are also often biased. In addition, they are also opaque and it becomes difficult to establish problematic characteristics.
- There is an inherent, three-way trade-off between individual fairness, group fairness and calibrating the final model efficiently.Ìý
Commentators in the West have caught onto this.
- Big-data analytics, by the very fact that they are and often for proï¬t, increase inequality and threaten democracy.Ìý
- All and sold to businesses. This new paradigm helps them influence behavior, and creates a new kind of inequality.
- As algorithms select, link, and analyse ever larger sets of data, they seek to into sources of proï¬t.
These concerns become exponentially complicated and more urgent when applied to India’s unique context.
🚫  India has unique social structures of exclusion and inequality.
ðŸÃÖï¸ Â The State in India has exercised significant intent in big data analytics through digital public goods.
🌎 India has complex relationships with technology companies from other countries.
In such a context, interdisciplinary research in conjunction with 👣 Sociology/Anthropology Ìý²¹²Ô»å ðŸÃÖï¸ Political Science is required to:
- Develop a framework to specify the minimum inherent risks of discrimination and unfair processing based on an ideal functionality of AI applications.
- Develop tools and techniques for reliability analysis of AI and ML applications, including design of post-deployment test-tools for measuring both reliability and utility.
- Develop standards for post-deployment measurement and monitoring of AI applications for safety (from bias and discrimination).
- Develop tools and techniques for specifying precise error models for the associated data.