Introduction Getting Started Ethics of Artificial Intelligence Artificial Intelligence Systems What is different about AI? The Most Important Question Algorithmic Bias Understanding Fairness Disparate Treatment and Disparate Impact A Fair Fat Pet Predictor The Impossibility Theorem Context-Free Fairness Learning about the Context Understanding Bias I Two Types of Harms Harms of Allocation Harms of Representation Understanding Bias II Bias from Data Bias from Algorithm Design Bias from Deployment Summary Checklist Resources About

About

Hi there! I’m Lim Swee Kiat, a graduate student enrolled in the MSc. Urban Science, Policy and Planning course at the Singapore University of Technology and Design.

Machines Gone Wrong is part of my final project, supervised by Prof. Lim Sun Sun.

This guide is meant to introduce AI practitioners to the concerns of AI ethics, specifically algorithmic bias. As an undergraduate engineer and subsequent AI researcher, I found the social and ethical aspects lacking in the curriculum. This is my response to the problem and served as a way to document my learning journey about the topic.

I will soon be headed to Stanford University for the MSCS program in fall 2019. For any queries or collaborations, drop me a mail at sweekiat [at] stanford [dot] edu!

Acknowledgements and Inspirations

The making of this guide was assisted and inspired by a ton of people.

  • All the wonderful professors, lecturers, staff and my fellow classmates in the 2019 batch of SUTD’s MUSPP course, for teaching me all about the urban and helping me through my struggles with interdisciplinary work, with special mention to Prof. Ate Poorthuis for all of his hard work in getting the program up and running!
  • Randall Munroe for his wonderful xkcd comics, and who has been a huge influence both in his graphic style and his explanations.
  • Bret Victor’s 2011 essay on Explorable Explanations, and Nicky Case and co. behind explorabl.es.
  • Chris Olah, Shan Carter and co. for creating Distill, which was a huge inspiration for this guide.