Looking Outwards 11

The societal issue that was mentioned in the reading talked about how shows art projects show racial prejudice through artificial intelligence both directly and indirectly. One specific example that stood out was the “ImageNet Roulette”. It is an artificial intelligence classification tool created by artist Trevor Paglen and A.I. researcher Kate Crawford. The AI would give the person it detects in the picture a title. Sometimes it’s objective, like a career but most of the time it judges based on skin color and it gives out subjective descriptions. It was an issue because the labels used to teach A.I. were sourced from the lab staff and crowdsourced workers; by categorizing presented images in terms of race, gender, age, and character, these individuals introduced their own conscious and unconscious opinions and biases into the algorithm. Something I’ve noticed is that for artwork that requires testing artists, there often is a neglecting representation of different racial groups. Being a minority, I often get disappointed to see my group not being represented in those works.

Citation:
Magazine, S. (2019, September 24). Art project shows racial biases in artificial intelligence system. Smithsonian.com. Retrieved November 16, 2022, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/art-project-exposed-racial-biases-artificial-intelligence-system-180973207/