While AI can do some things on its own, it’s a blunt force, ignorant of nuance, but embracing all the  bias, prejudices, bigotry and downright stupidity of past generations thanks to its training.

Using AI to make judgement calls that are implemented sans human involvement is like using a five pound sledgehammer on a thumbtack.

Yesterday looked at what AI can miss in hiring situations, but candidates at least have more choice than others do.

AI is being used extensively around the world by government and law enforcement where its bias is especially hard on people of color.

The algorithm is one of many making decisions about people’s lives in the United States and Europe. Local authorities use so-called predictive algorithms to set police patrols, prison sentences and probation rules. In the Netherlands, an algorithm flagged welfare fraud risks. A British city rates which teenagers are most likely to become criminals.

Human judgement may be flawed and it does has the same prejudices, but it’s not inflexible, whereas AI is.

As the practice spreads into new places and new parts of government, United Nations investigators, civil rights lawyers, labor unions and community organizers have been pushing back.

Now schools are jumping on the bandwagon claiming that facial recognition will make schools safer, but not everyone agrees.

“Subjecting 5-year-olds to this technology will not make anyone safer, and we can’t allow invasive surveillance to become the norm in our public spaces,” said Stefanie Coyle, deputy director of the Education Policy Center for the New York Civil Liberties Union. (…)

Critics of the technology, including Mr. Shultz and the New York Civil Liberties Union, point to the growing evidence of racial bias in facial recognition systems. In December, the federal government released a study, one of the largest of its kind, that found that most commercial facial recognition systems exhibited bias, falsely identifying African-American and Asian faces 10 to 100 times more than Caucasian faces. Another federal study found a higher rate of mistaken matches among children.

So what do the kids think?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff…

Read the Q&A to find out.

Image credit: Mike MacKenzie

Today I was driving and my car burst into flames.

I wish that a hook to get you interested, but it’s the reality of what happened.

It made me think about some things as I watched the fire department spray my car down. (The image above is not my car.) One was, am I driving a safe car? The second thought was, how can I better myself so I don’t have do face this again.

Life will always give ups and downs, but can we prevent tragedy?

I find that the current state of affairs in tech are really trying to prevent tragedy and perfect our world. Facebook wants to prevent election tampering. Tesla wants to automate cars. Uber wants to increase safety of riders. Amazon wants you to order an item and receive it same day.

They all are seeking to alleviate pain and make our lives easier.

Is that what we want? I do.

However what is the cost? I’m not sure yet but I’ll let you know.

Good news. I’m safe, my car is towed and I can write another day.

Image credit: Jason Bolonski

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

Founders are a breed apart, especially young founders, with little to no business experience, let alone leadership/managerial experience.

I got a call from one I work with occasionally. After getting the information he had called for he took me to task over Monday’s post.

In short, he said that founders don’t have much time to spend on culture, let alone do the people-managing stuff I’m always writing about.

He went on to say that’s why people in young companies tend to be so similar. It’s far easier, not to mention more comfortable, to get stuff done when everyone has a similar mindset.

My response was that his mindset would do much to limit his market, so he would do well to plan on being a nitch player.

It was not appreciated.

Curating a team creates the same problem that curating freshmen roommate assignments created.

There’s no question that curation reinforces opinions, while eliminating conflicting ones, narrows people beyond from where they started and acts like fertilizer to unconscious bias and outright bigotry.

Curation, whether of roommates of team, has no positive effect, which is why colleges are going back to random freshman matching and companies are striving for more diversity. Duke eliminated curated matching.

Freshman year of college, Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs at Duke explained, is about students “engaging with difference and opening their eyes to opportunities, and meeting entirely different people than the ones they grew up with or went to high school with.”

What this 26-year-old founder didn’t say (and may not even realize) is that some things, such as successful managing, are the result of hard-won experience, not “vision.”

There is a reason that more diverse companies have better results.

Just as there is a reason that managers who practice good customer service on their teams attract the best people, have lower turnover, and enjoy better personal career growth / stronger startup success (if founders).

Image credit: HikingArtist

Is your team psychologically safe?

As a boss, no matter the level, it’s your responsibility to foster a psychologically safe culture for your team.

First, you need to know that it’s a relatively simple concept.

Psychological safety is a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.^[1] In psychologically safe teams, team members feel accepted and respected. It is also the most studied enabling condition in group dynamics and team learning research.

But not that simple to implement.

It’s also something that is highly unlikely to happen by accident.

If you are interested in the concept why not learn from Google as they set out to build the perfect team.

Flickr image credit: JC