I found the conversation between Professor Goodman and Ben Shneiderman very interesting, especially because I know very little about machine learning and artificial intelligence beyond the ways they are discussed in the public. Shneiderman seems concerned with the ways the public discusses these ideas because he seems to believe that there are broad misconceptions about what the technology does. Since I have very limited knowledge about these topics, all machine learning and artificial intelligence seems like a bit of magic to me. I appreciate that he demands that the people creating these technologies have a concrete understanding of what they actually do so that they can be used as tools for humans. In particular, I liked his discussion of FAT-ML (fair, accountable, transparent machine learning). He thinks these three factors in developing these new technologies will allow humans to overcome the excesses of the early work which overemphasizes the abilities of computers and equates them with humans to a certain extent. His fear about using words like “know”, “partner”, and “think” when applied to computers is rooted in his belief that we should use new technologies for the betterment of humanity. This simple idea seems extremely important in fields that are growing as rapidly as machine learning and artificial intelligence.
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