Eric Lawton

@Eric0Lawton
27 Followers
169 Following
900 Posts

Natural philosopher (STEM background), retired IT Architect.
Supporting public policy based on kindness, respect and evidence.

Cis, het: he.

Settler on the traditional territories the Mississauga branch of the Ojibwa Nation.

It is subject to a new treaty signed in 2018 and I insist as a settler that my government honours the commitments made in its apology.

https://williamstreatiesfirstnations.ca/

Websitehttps://ericlawton.org/
LocationMississauga Anishinaabe land, Ontario
Eric LawtonJun 10, 2023
Alison CreeksideJun 10, 2023
Wow. Ana Bailão on the front page of Toronto Star today, looking like a full-page ad.
Just like the Star did for Doug Ford in the 2022 #onpoli election #mediafail
Eric LawtonJun 10, 2023
Alison CreeksideJun 10, 2023
Pierre Elliott Trudeau favoured proportional representation in 1980 to address Canada's regional voting imbalances.
He set up the the Pepin-Robarts Commission which recommended MMP.
We have now had 100 years of commissions starting with Mackenzie King in 1923 - all of which have recommended #ProportionalRepresentation.
https://www.cbc.ca/archives/when-pierre-trudeau-said-canada-needed-proportional-representation-1.5358177
When Pierre Trudeau said Canada needed proportional representation | CBC

It was yet another twist in the highly dramatic year of Pierre Trudeau's life that was 1979.

CBC
Eric LawtonJun 10, 2023
Show threadTimnit Gebru (she/her).Jun 9, 2023
When you ask someone to “recommend” potential researchers in this extremely segregated and homogeneous world, they will recommend other researchers who are their friends, read the same hacker news every day and talk about the same things. They will recommend other boys in the very tight boys network.
Eric LawtonJun 10, 2023
Show threadTimnit Gebru (she/her).Jun 9, 2023
If there was even one Black person in the team, or just someone who thinks about race, a product classifying Black people as apes would not have been released. Either the dataset would have been sufficiently augmented, or more research into the algorithm would have been mandated. But a product with this type of misclassification would not have been released. Imagine an algorithm that regularly classifies White people as non-human.
Eric LawtonJun 10, 2023
Show threadTimnit Gebru (she/her).Jun 9, 2023
Google recently came out with a computer vision algorithm that classified black people as Apes. AS APES. Some try to explain away this mishap by stating that the algorithm must have picked out color as an essential discriminator in classifying humans.
Eric LawtonJun 10, 2023
Show threadTimnit Gebru (she/her).Jun 9, 2023
A White tech tycoon born and raised in South Africa during apartheid, along with an all White all male set of investors and researchers is trying to stop AI from “taking over the world” and the only potential problem we see is that “all the researchers are working on deep learning?”
Eric LawtonJun 10, 2023
Show threadTimnit Gebru (she/her).Jun 9, 2023

I struggle to understand Silicon Valley’s libertarians’ allergic reaction to discussing problems caused by the extreme homogeneity of the research circle. The same is true for many in the AI research community of which I am a part. As this thoughtfully written letter to SCOTUS from physicists explains,

The implication that physics or “hard sciences” are somehow divorced from the social realities of racism in our society is completely fallacious.

Eric LawtonJun 10, 2023
Timnit Gebru (she/her).Jun 9, 2023
Here's what I wrote in 2015 when our OpenAI overlords were announced, and after I had a terrible experience at NIPS (a conference now named NeuRIPS after a number of people, mostly women demanded a name change and received death threats for doing so. Interesting to see my reflections from ~8 years ago, not much I'd change except for certain phrases I probably wouldn't use now (e.g. implicit bias).
Eric LawtonJun 10, 2023
Show threadTimnit Gebru (she/her).Jun 9, 2023

I am very concerned about the future of AI. Not because of the risk of rogue machines taking over. But because of the homogeneous, one dimensional group of men who are currently involved in advancing the technology.

Concerned AI researcher

Eric LawtonJun 10, 2023
Show threadGGJun 8, 2023

"One of the shocking things revealed in this reporting was that victims of crimes committed by the Fords refused to testify because they were too terrified of them. Yet the head of the local police division is a close pal of the family."

@iamdavidmiller
#voteTO #toronto #topoli #Cops #dofo