Hosted by Faisal Al Yafai
Featuring Hilke Schellman
Produced by Finbar Anderson
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After several episodes on the subject of developments in AI technology, The Lede host Faisal Al Yafai is considering the secret politics behind smart machines: how to get artificial intelligence to reflect human values.
“What are human values,” Al Yafai asks in this audio essay. “How do you formalize ideas like fairness and justice? I may have my own idea of what’s fair and just, you may have another, and the coders working on a large language model might have another.”
“Our concept of fairness is so multifaceted that it is almost impossible to put it into computer code.”
Al Yafai asks journalist Hilke Schellman on to the podcast to discuss the insights she gained from researching her book “The Algorithm,” which considers the specific example of why AI tools used in the hiring process carry inherent flaws and biases.
“When AI tools came into the workplace years ago, the promise was really positive. It would test everyone the same way and look at everyone the same way,” Schellman says. “The promise is democratized hiring because it will give everyone the same chance. … That sounds great to everyone, right?”
Unfortunately, Schellmann says, “I found that there’s a lot of bias and problematic things built into some of these tools.”
The problem, Schellmann agrees, is in realizing ideas of fairness and justice in a way that can be coded into an AI tool. “How do you translate social concepts that we as a society can’t even agree on?”
Further listening:
AI Is Transforming Geopolitics — with Bruno Maçães and Faisal Al Yafai
America’s Era of the Entrepreneur — with Erik Baker and Faisal Al Yafai