Is AI Making People Lose A Sense Of Achievement

Kashyap Raibagi

Analytics India Magazine

Originally published 27 Nov 20

Here is an excerpt:

The achievement gaps

In the case of ‘total displacement’ of jobs due to automation, there is nothing to consider in terms of achievement. But if there is a ‘collaborative replacement’, then it has the potential to create achievement gaps, noted by the study.

Where once workers used their cognitive and physical abilities to be creative, efficient and hard-working to produce a commodifiable output, automation has reduced their roles to merely maintain, take orders, or supervise. 

For instance, since an AI-based tool can help find the perfect acoustics in a room, a musician’s road crew’s job that was once considered very significant is reduced to a mere ‘maintenance’ role. Or an Amazon worker has to only ‘take orders’ to place packages to keep the storage organised. Even coders who created the best AI chess players are only ‘supervising’ the AI-player to beat other players, not playing chess themselves. This reduces the value of their role in the output produced.

Also, in terms of a worker’s commitments, while one may substitute the other, the substitution does not necessarily ensure a sense of achievement. An Uber driver’s effort to find customers may have reduced, but his substituted effort in doing more rides, which is a more physical effort, does not necessarily give him a better sense of achievement. 

The info is here.

Do Disasters Affect Adherence to Social Norms?

Max Winkler

Research Paper

Originally published 26 NOV 20

Abstract

Universally, social norms prescribe behavior and attitudes, but societies differ widely in how strictly individuals adhere to the norms and punish those who do not. This paper shows that collective traumatic experiences, henceforth “disasters”, lead to stricter adherence to social norms.  To establish this result, I combine data on the occurrences of conflicts, epidemics, and natural and economic disasters with the World Value Surveys and European Social Surveys. I use this data set to estimate the effect of disasters on norm adherence in two ways: (i) investigating event-studies that compare individuals interviewed in the days before and after the same disaster; and (ii) examining variation in individuals’ past exposure to disasters across countries and cohorts while controlling for country-, cohort-, and life-cycle-specific factors. The event-studies demonstrate that disasters strengthen adherence to social norms by 11 percent. The analysis of cross-country variation shows that the effect is long-lasting, often for several decades. Consistent with a model in which social coordination is beneficial when disasters threaten the success of entire groups, the effect of disasters on norm adherence is more pronounced in low-income countries, where survival is less secure. The results suggest that past exposure to disasters partially explains within-group cohesion and, if groups have different norms, between-group divides.

From the Conclusion

The results shed light on three related issues. First, they provide a rationale for why some societies are more culturally diverse than others. A large literature demonstrates that the cultural differences we see today across societies are the result of an evolutionary process. The findings in this paper suggest that this evolutionary logic also applies to differences in within-country variability in these cultural traits across societies. When norm adherence is widespread, it restricts the scope of acceptable behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes, and thereby fosters cultural homogeneity.  Second, the paper offers a novel explanation for why short-run adverse shocks such as conflict sometimes lead to greater cooperation within groups. By increasing adherence to local norms, such shocks promote prosocial behavior if local norms are prosocial. Third, the paper demonstrates that individuals who experience threats to their living standards cling more tightly to their community's norms, values, and beliefs, and become less tolerant of others who behave or think differently, even within relatively short periods.

Involuntary Commitments: Billing Patients for Forced Psychiatric Care.

Nathaniel P. Morris & Robert A. Kleinman

The American Journal of Psychiatry

Vol 177, 12, 1115-1116.

Surprise medical billing, in which patients face unexpected out-of-pocket medical costs, has attracted widespread attention. As of March 2020, members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate were working on legislation to limit these billing practices. Surprise medical bills have various consequences for patients and families, including loss of income or savings, worsened credit scores, use of resources for legal counsel or litigation, and psychological stress. Patients can receive surprise medical bills for care they did not authorize, including treatment for loss of consciousness, cardiac arrest, traumatic injuries, and other emergencies where informed consent cannot be obtained before care. A related set of medical bills has not garnered much attention yet may rank among the most surprising for patients and families—bills for involuntary psychiatric care.

Billing patients for involuntary psychiatric care deserves more attention for several reasons. First, these patients may be held financially liable for care they did not authorize and even actively refused. Compared with most medical care, involuntary psychiatric care is different in that patients can be detained for evaluation and treatment against their expressed wishes. All U.S. states have statutes that authorize emergency and inpatient civil commitment, such as involuntary hospitalization on grounds of dangerousness to self or others due to a mental disorder, and a majority of states have provisions for outpatient civil commitment. These statutes are based on principles that under specific circumstances, individual and/or public benefits of managing someone’s mental health needs supersede that person’s rights to refuse psychiatric care. However, forcing someone to assume financial liability for involuntary psychiatric care may infringe upon additional liberties, including individuals’ abilities to consent to contracts and to allocate money. By shifting the balance of autonomy, justice, beneficence, and nonmaleficence associated with involuntary psychiatric care, these billing practices raise ethical concerns.

The info is here.

The weirdness of belief in free will

Berniūnas, R, et al.

Consciousness and Cognition

Volume 87, January 2021, 103054

Abstract

It has been argued that belief in free will is socially consequential and psychologically universal. In this paper we look at the folk concept of free will and its critical assessment in the context of recent psychological research. Is there a widespread consensus about the conceptual content of free will? We compared English “free will” with its lexical equivalents in Lithuanian, Hindi, Chinese and Mongolian languages and found that unlike Lithuanian, Chinese, Hindi and Mongolian lexical expressions of “free will” do not refer to the same concept free will. What kind people have been studied so far? A review of papers indicate that, overall, 91% of participants in studies on belief in free will were WEIRD. Thus, given that free will has no cross-culturally universal conceptual content and that most of the reviewed studies were based on WEIRD samples, belief in free will is not a psychological universal.

Highlights

• The concept of free will has no cross-culturally universal conceptual content.

• Most of the reviewed studies on belief in free will were based on WEIRD samples.

• The term “free will” is inadequate for cross-cultural research.

From the General Discussion

Unfortunately, there has been little effort in cross-cultural (construct and external) validation of the very concept of free will. In explicating the folk concept of free will, Monroe and Malle (2010) showed that the ability to make decisions and choice are the most prototypical features (see also Feldman, 2017; Feldman et al., 2014). However, this is a description only of intuitions of English speaking participants. Here we tested whether there is a widespread consensus about the conceptual content (of free will) across culturally and linguistically diverse samples — hence, universality and cultural hypotheses. Overall, on the basis of free-listing results, it could be argued that two lexical expressions of English “free will” and Lithuanian “laisva valia” refer to the same concept of free will. Whereas Chinese ziyou yizhi, Hindi svatantra icchā, and Mongolian chölöötei khüsel, as newly constructed lexical expressions of “free will”, do not refer to the same concept of free will.

The research is here.

Why business cannot afford to ignore tech ethics

Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan

ft.com

Originally posted 6 DEC 20

From one angle, the pandemic looks like a vindication of “techno-solutionism”. From the more everyday developments of teleconferencing to systems exploiting advanced artificial intelligence, platitudes to the power of innovation abound.

Such optimism smacks of short-termism. Desperate times often call for swift and sweeping solutions, but implementing technologies without regard for their impact is risky and increasingly unacceptable to wider society. The business leaders of the future who purchase and deploy such systems face costly repercussions, both financial and reputational.

Tech ethics, while a relatively new field, has suffered from perceptions that it is either the domain of philosophers or PR people. This could not be further from the truth — as the pandemic continues, so the importance grows of mapping out potential harms from technologies.

Take, for example, biometrics such as facial-recognition systems. These have a clear appeal for companies looking to check who is entering their buildings, how many people are wearing masks or whether social distancing is being observed. Recent advances in the field have combined technologies such as thermal scanning and “periocular recognition” (the ability to identify people wearing masks).

But the systems pose serious questions for those responsible for purchasing and deploying them. At a practical level, facial recognition has long been plagued by accusations of racial bias.

The info is here.

Google AI researcher's exit sparks ethics, bias concerns

Timnit Gebru

Matt Obrien

AP Tech Writer

Originally published 4 DEC 20

Here is an excerpt:

Gebru on Tuesday vented her frustrations about the process to an internal diversity-and-inclusion email group at Google, with the subject line: “Silencing Marginalized Voices in Every Way Possible." Gebru said on Twitter that's the email that got her fired.

Dean, in an email to employees, said the company accepted “her decision to resign from Google” because she told managers she'd leave if her demands about the study were not met.

"Ousting Timnit for having the audacity to demand research integrity severely undermines Google’s credibility for supporting rigorous research on AI ethics and algorithmic auditing," said Joy Buolamwini, a graduate researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who co-authored the 2018 facial recognition study with Gebru.

“She deserves more than Google knew how to give, and now she is an all-star free agent who will continue to transform the tech industry,” Buolamwini said in an email Friday.

How Google will handle its AI ethics initiative and the internal dissent sparked by Gebru's exit is one of a number of problems facing the company heading into the new year.

At the same time she was on her way out, the National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday cast another spotlight on Google's workplace. In a complaint, the NRLB accused the company of spying on employees during a 2019 effort to organize a union before the company fired two activist workers for engaging in activities allowed under U.S. law. Google has denied the allegations in the case, which is scheduled for an April hearing.

The info is here.

Internal Google document reveals campaign against EU lawmakers

Javie Espinoza

ft.com

Originally published 28 OCT 20

Here is an excerpt:

The leak of the internal document lays bare the tactics that big tech companies employ behind the scenes to manipulate public discourse and influence lawmakers. The presentation is watermarked as “privileged and need-to-know” and “confidential and proprietary”.

The revelations are set to create new tensions between the EU and Google, which are already engaged in tough discussions about how the internet should be regulated. They are also likely to trigger further debate within Brussels, where regulators hold divergent positions on the possibility of breaking up big tech companies.

Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s executive vice-president in charge of competition and digital policy, on Tuesday argued to MEPs that structural separation of big tech is not “the right thing to do”. However, in a recent interview with the FT, Mr Breton accused such companies of being “too big to care”, and suggested that they should be broken up in extreme circumstances.

Among the other tactics outlined in the report were objectives to “undermine the idea DSA has no cost to Europeans” and “show how the DSA limits the potential of the internet . . . just as people need it the most”.

The campaign document also shows that Google will seek out “more allies” in its fight to influence the regulation debate in Brussels, including enlisting the help of Europe-based platforms such as Booking.com.

Booking.com told the FT: “We have no intention of co-operating with Google on upcoming EU platform regulation. Our interests are diametrically opposed.”

The info is here.

Effects of Language on Visual Perception

Lupyan, G., et al. (2020, April 28). 

https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/pztmc

Abstract

Does language change what we perceive? Does speaking different languages cause us to perceive things differently? We review the behavioral and electrophysiological evidence for the influence of language on perception, with an emphasis on the visual modality. Effects of language on perception can be observed both in higher-level processes such as recognition, and in lower-level processes such as discrimination and detection. A consistent finding is that language causes us to perceive in a more categorical way. Rather than being fringe or exotic, as they are sometimes portrayed, we discuss how effects of language on perception naturally arise from the interactive and predictive nature of perception.

Highlights

• Our ability to detect, discriminate, and recognize perceptual stimuli is influenced both by their physical features and our prior experiences.

• One potent prior experience is language. How might learning a language affect perception?

• We review evidence of linguistic effects on perception, focusing on the effects of language on visual recognition, discrimination, and detection.

• Language exerts both off-line and on-line effects on visual processing; these effects naturally emerge from taking a predictive processing approach to perception.

In sum, language shapes perception in terms of higher-level processes (recognition) and lower-level processes (discrimination and detection).

Very important research in terms of psychotherapy and the language we use.

Bias in bias recognition: People view others but not themselves as biased by preexisting beliefs and social stigmas

Wang Q, Jeon HJ (2020) 

PLoS ONE 15(10): e0240232. 

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240232

Abstract

Biases perpetuate when people think that they are innocent whereas others are guilty of biases. We examined whether people would detect biased thinking and behavior in others but not themselves as influenced by preexisting beliefs (myside bias) and social stigmas (social biases). The results of three large studies showed that, across demographic groups, participants attributed more biases to others than to themselves, and that this self-other asymmetry was particularly salient among those who hold strong beliefs about the existence of biases (Study 1 and Study 2). The self-other asymmetry in bias recognition dissipated when participants made simultaneous predictions about others’ and their own thoughts and behaviors (Study 3). People thus exhibit bias in bias recognition, and this metacognitive bias may be remedied when it is highlighted to people that we are all susceptible to biasing influences.

From the Discussion

Indeed, the current studies reveal the critical role of explicit beliefs about biases in underlying the biased reasoning concerning one’s own and others’ thoughts and behaviors: The more strongly people believed that biases widely existed, the more inclined they were to ascribe biases to others but not themselves. These findings suggest that the conviction that the world is generally biased and yet the self is the exception contributes to the self-other asymmetry in bias recognition. They further suggest important individual differences whereby some individuals more strongly believe that myside bias and social biases widely exist and yet convince themselves that “I’m not one of them” when making judgements about these biases in everyday situations. In comparison, individuals who held weaker beliefs about the biases attributed less bias overall and exhibited less self-other asymmetry in recognizing the biases. These findings thus provide valuable information for future focus-group interventions. They further suggest that when learning about bias, as occurs in most introductory psychology classes, students should be reminded that they are equally susceptible as others to biasing influences.

The research is here.