Homework: Reflect on Readings

Background

As part of this course, you will be given assigned readings. These readings will focus on design, AI, and ethics. Please take the time to reflect on each week’s readings to fully understand the material and be fully prepared for the following week’s course.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this activity, you will better grasp the readings assigned for this week. You will have summarized the main concepts and ideas in the papers using your own words. This will enable you to work with the materials more effectively as the course progresses.

Instructions

• In your notebook, you can create an entry for each question below, with an answer in your own words.
• Questions for Alkhatib & Bernstein (2019)
  • What is a street-level bureaucrat? By analogy, what is a street-level algorithm?
  • Street-level bureaucrats and algorithms translate defined or expressed policies into “effective” policies. However, in each case, the role of reflexivity is different. Can you describe the difference?
  • When a street-level algorithm makes a mistake, one reason might be bias, but there can also be another cause for errors. What is this cause? And why can this problem not be solved by simply adding more training data?
  • In addition to ensuring fairness, accountability, and transparency, the authors claim some other mechanism is required to mitigate against street-level algorithms’ inability to “fill in the gaps.” What mechanism is this, and what are the authors’ requirements for it?
• Questions for Birhane et al. (2022)
  • How do the authors define “participatory AI”?
  • What are some of the differences between participatory AI development and the traditional model?
  • What are some of the challenges facing participatory AI?

Product

The assigned readings should be summarized in your own words and captured in your notebook as a collection of notes, each containing the summary of one idea.

Follow-up

Generated ideas will be used in next week’s session.