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This paper is an initial report of our fair AI design project by a small research team made up of anthropologists and computer scientists. Our collaborative project was developed in response to the recent debates on AI's ethical and social issues (Elish and boyd 2018). We share this understanding that "numbers don't speak for themselves," but data enters into research projects already "fully cooked" (D'Ignazio and Klein 2020). Therefore, we take an anthropological approach to observing, recording, understanding, and reflecting upon the process of machine learning algorithm design from the first steps of choosing and coding datasets for training and building algorithms. We tease apart the encoding of social-cultural paradigms in the generation and use of datasets in algorithm design and testing. By doing so, we rediscover the human in data to challenge the methodological and social assumptions in data use and then to adjust the model and parameters of our algorithms. This paper centers on tracing the social trajectory of the Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, known as the COMPAS dataset. This dataset contains data of over 10,000 criminal defendants in Broward County in Florida, the U.S. Since its publication, it has become a benchmark dataset in the study of algorithmic fairness and was also used to design and train our algorithm for recidivism prediction. This paper presents our observation that data results from a complex set of social, political, and historical assumptions and circumstances and demonstrates how the social trajectory of data can be taken into the design of AI as automated systems become more intricate into our daily lives.”
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The Impact of Ancient Genome Studies in Archaeology
The study of ancient genomes has burgeoned at an incredible rate in the last decade. The result is a shift in archaeological narratives, bringing with it a fierce debate on the place of genetics in anthropological research. Archaeogenomics has challenged and scrutinized fundamental themes of anthropological research, including human origins, movement of ancient and modern populations, the role of social organization in shaping material culture, and the relationship between culture, language, and ancestry. Moreover, the discussion has inevitably invoked new debates on indigenous rights, ownership of ancient materials, inclusion in the scientific process, and even the meaning of what it is to be a human. We argue that the broad and seemingly daunting ethical, methodological, and theoretical challenges posed by archaeogenomics, in fact, represent the very cutting edge of social science research. Here, we provide a general review of the field by introducing the contemporary discussion points and summarizing methodological and ethical concerns, while highlighting the exciting possibilities of ancient genome studies in archaeology from an anthropological perspective.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1714867
- PAR ID:
- 10279873
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Annual Review of Anthropology
- Volume:
- 49
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0084-6570
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 277 to 298
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-010220-074353
