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AI & Society

Homework: Reflect on Readings

Background

You are assigned readings throughout this course. The readings cover subjects including design, AI and ethics. Each week, you are asked to reflect on your readings, to help you get the most out of the material, and be properly prepared for next week’s course. 

Learning Objectives

After completing this activity you will have gained a deeper understanding of this week’s readings, and will have summarized the core ideas in the papers in your own words, so that you can work with them in the course going forward.

Instructions

  • In your personal notebook, create an entry for each of the questions below, with an answer to the question in your own words.
  • Questions for Katell et al. (2020)
    1. The authors describe how policy makers sometimes don’t recognise an AI-enabled system as using AI. Why is that a problem? What can designers do to make this problem less severe?
    2. The authors talk about how in automated decision making systems, it is often the case that some communities have more at stake than others. Can you think of a system in your own daily environment where this might be the case? Who are the communities in this case, and how does one have more at stake than the other?
    3. The authors talk about how some of the most effective solutions for ensuring fairness, accountability and transparency of AI systems are non-technical. Can you give an example from the paper of a non-technical solution that they describe? 
  • Questions for Cheng et al., (2019)
    1. The authors tests a number of ways of explaining an algorithmic decision: “whitebox” versus “blackbox”, and “interactive” versus “static”. Can you describe each variant?
    2. Interactive explanations improve objective and subjective understanding more than static explanations do, but they have a downside. What is the drawback of using an interactive explanation?
    3. Whitebox explanations increased objective understanding more than blackbox explanations, but not subjective (self-reported) understanding. Why might that be?
    4. Surprisingly, with increased understanding, trust did not increase. Why might that be the case?

Product

The result of this activity is a collection of notes, each with a summary of one idea in the assigned readings, described in your own words, captured in your personal notebook.

Follow-up

You will use the ideas generated in this way in next week’s session’s activities.