Communique for #BlackMastodon and Black folk only:

(White folk can listen too if they want, but this conversation is not for them).

The people telling you to be very afraid of Artificial General Intelligence don't know what they're talking about. Remember, their last big predictions were:
* Monkey jpegs are now money. Buy crypto.
* Elon will be great for Twitter
* Listening to VCs talk on Clubhouse is the next big social network
* Adam Neuman is a genius, and we should give him more money

These people are very very rich, not very very smart. The track record of their judgment speaks for itself.

There are very real, very serious, risks from Machine Learning in general, but they are not the risks that these delusional dudes are talking about.

The real risks are not "coming in the near future." They are here with us today, and they affect systems that impact marginalized communities the most.

Most of the experts on the real risks are from marginalized communities.

All this talk of artificial general intelligence is a head fake to draw attention from the massive and real harms that can be caused by ML systems today.

Today's systems can:
* Issue a warrant for your arrest for a crime that you didn't even do based on facial recognition
* Decide that you are a pre-trial flight risk and deny you pre-trial release
* Give a false diagnosis at a hospital, deciding that you are not worth putting on life support
* Tell a car to run you over as you cross the street

Start with

@timnitGebru @abebab
@alex
@emilymbender

And work out from there to people that they collaborate with and recommend. 👍🏿

Don't take your AI Ethics and societal impact advice from VCs that hang out in Nazi chatrooms. These people aren't that smart, but most importantly, they don't care about you. At all.

A few years ago, I said don't get your financial advice from VCs that hang out in Nazi chatrooms. Some of y'all listened. Others lost their shirts on crypto.

Yes, they have sharp criticism of big tech companies that work in this space. That's a feature not a bug.

If you ever have the immense privilege to work on something that impacts all of us, positively or negatively, expect criticism.

I'm not Miles Dyson. I'm not going to accidentally create T2. That's not a real risk.

But I might accidentally build a system that doesn't work for Black folk. Your city might turn over law enforcement decisions to a system incapable of making unbiased decisions.

Being afraid of made up ML risks, and not being afraid of very real, very present ML risks, is kinda like dogs being terribly afraid of vacuum cleaners and fireworks, while being completely unafraid of mountain lions and rattlesnakes. 🤷🏿‍♂️
@mekkaokereke Yup, bunch of blowhards got very good at spouting confident-sounding lines without understanding the meaning or value of anything, and whilst being ignorant of their own biases. Now they suddenly feel threatened when they see a statistical model do exactly the same, and presume the worst.
@mekkaokereke And let us not forget about the dangers shown for over 100 years of the original AI: Corporations
@mekkaokereke racism with plausible deniability is a feature to these people, not an issue