Category: Ethics
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A Mustache is all you Need
Add one to your profile picture, drop your pronouns, and change your name to something masculine, and your LinkedIn posts will become 200+% more visible. I am seeing this claim trending on LinkedIn recently and find it concerning. Not because it exposes gender bias in LinkedIn’s recommendation algorithm, but because the claims are not backed…
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Why GenAI Systems are Biased
There are two categories of AI systems: Symbolic AI and Deep Learning. Symbolic AI requires the builders to define the rules it will apply. If you are trying to understand language, you would need to add grammatical rules. Deep Learning, on the other hand, starts with no rules and creates rules that match the patterns…
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Does social media need more than attention?
For transformers and recommendation algorithms, it is all about attention. Social media platforms want to capture as much of your attention as possible in order to show you ads and collect metadata about you. LinkedIn recently notified users that it would utilize their content to train AI models unless they opt out. I’m curious if…
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A Wakeup Call for Tech Workers
Tech companies, and frankly, most of the knowledge work industry, have jumped at the opportunity to replace human workers with AI. This possibility was so enticing that they didn’t bother to wait to see if the technology’s promises were real. They may have shown their hand too soon. I believe that we are fortunate that…
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Recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ Day
I grew up knowing today’s holiday as Columbus Day. Christopher Columbus received a pretty positive review throughout most of my early education. I am grateful that my kids are now learning the reality of his impact. Change is hard, and we are right to protect our traditions and values. When I first heard today’s holiday…
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Why Our Language for AI Matters
Describing AI Agents as digital workers who are members of your digital workforce is great marketing. It is also dehumanizing. Analogy is a powerful tool to explain innovation. Referring to something we already know and understand makes it easier to conceptualize novel ideas. There are certainly similarities between tasks currently done by human workers and…
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60% of the Time it Works Every Time
Statistics make great hooks to draw in an audience. LinkedIn posters know this. Though they don’t seem to be too concerned about supporting those statistics with sources. Whenever I see strong claims backed by stats with no source data, I immediately become skeptical of its validity. Here are two recent examples that stood out: “80%…
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It Rained In Ohio On The Night Allen Iverson Hit Michael Jordan With A Crossover
I grew up a Philadelphia sports fan. While I wasn’t a huge basketball fan, I remember Allen Iversen (the original AI) as a dynamic and exciting player to watch. I was naive back then. I took the media report of Iversons infamous “Practice?!!” press conference at face value. There really was only one version of…
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GenAI refused to recommend me books for Black History Month
Me: “what are some good books to read for black history month?” GenAI starts listing some books like it normally would, then…the response got erased and I was left with. GenAI: “Hmm…it looks like I can’t chat about this. Let’s try a different topic.” This was weird and disturbing. I had to double-check what I…