Hello world
"Hello World takes us on a tour through the good, the bad, and the downright ugly of the algorithms that surround us on a daily basis. Mathematician Hannah Fry reveals their inner workings, showing us how algorithms are written and implemented, and demonstrates the ways in which human bias can literally be written into the code. By weaving in relatable, real world stories with accessible explanations of the underlying mathematics that power algorithms, Hello World helps us to determine their power, expose their limitations, and examine whether they really are improvement on the human systems they replace."
Stats for nerds
5recommend
7mentions
7people
2017–2023years
71% recommend29% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Facial recognition software fails legal tests if used with large datasets. It does so b/c software does not discriminate in the same way the human mind does.
For example, some facial recognition software identifies this picture of a man wearing glasses as actress Milla Jovovitch:
https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/0...
[The New Scientist article from which the above picture is taken is "Glasses make face recognition tech think you're Milla Jovovich":
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2111041-glasses-make-fa... ]
The (PDF) original paper:
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sbhagava/papers/face-rec-ccs16.pdf
Steven Talley was identified by the FBI as the primary suspect in two bank robberies using a facial recognition algorithm. He had an iron-clad alibi, but the police and FBI weren't convinced. In court one of the bank tellers said Talley definitely wasn't the robber. Nonetheless Talley lost his job, his wife and his family and was held in prison for months. For more details read:
"LOSING FACE: How a Facial Recognition Mismatch Can Ruin Your Life"
https://theintercept.com/2016/10/13/how-a-facial-recognition...
I found out about the facial recognition failures from he outstanding book "Hello World" by Hannah Fry. Fry tells the story of Steven Talley as part of a chapter on crime, AI and facial recognition.
https://www.amazon.com/Hello-World-Being-Human-Algorithms/dp...
Fry's book shows how/why facial recognition software simply does not work well enough to use in police work. She provides the studies and footnotes them. As Fry says:
"If you're searching for a particular criminal in digital line-up of millions...the best-case scenario is that you won't find the right person one in six times...". That is not nearly good enough for law enforcement and the courts.
-from "Hello World" by Hannah Fry
- That's nothing: Steven Talley was identified by the FBI as the primary suspect in two bank robberies using a facial recognition algorithm. He had an iron-clad alibi, but the police and FBI weren't convinced. In court one of the bank tellers said Talley definitely wasn't the robber. Nonetheless Talley lost his job, his wife and his family and was held in prison for months:
"LOSING FACE: How a Facial Recognition Mismatch Can Ruin Your Life"
https://theintercept.com/2016/10/13/how-a-facial-recognition...
FTFA:
"Talley said he was held for nearly two months in a maximum security pod and was released only after his public defender obtained his employer’s surveillance records. In a time-stamped audio recording from 11:12 a.m. on the day of the May robbery, Talley could be heard at his desk trying to sell mutual funds to a potential client."
Today Talley is still trying to claw his way back to normalcy.
In the outstanding book "Hello World" Hannah Fry examines Talley's story as part of a chapter on crime, AI and facial recognition. Reading Fry's book convinced me that facial recognition software simply does not work well enough to use in police work. As Fry says:
"If you're searching for a particular criminal in digital line-up of millions...the best-case scenario is that you won't find the right person one in six times...". That is not nearly good enough for law enforcement and the courts.
"Hello World" by Hannah Fry
- Hannah Fry's book, "Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine" explores this topic in a balanced and thoughtful way. Of course algorithms aren't perfect, but they are definitely useful tools that should be combined with human expertise.
> humans do a far better job at real-world operations
The book points to several examples (specifically in law enforcement and criminal justice) where common sense tells us this is true ("humans do a far better job"), but statistics show otherwise. Human judgement is helpful to a degree, but without tools like these algorithms provide, it's actually far worse, and subject to all kinds of biases.
The question is, if a particular area statistically has more crime, does it really matter whether it's a human or an algorithm making the judgement to send officers there more often? I know it's taboo to talk about (at least in the past few weeks), but police presence overwhelmingly helps reduce crime, so lets be smart about how, when, and where to deploy more law enforcement. Let's use data-based tools to help inform our decisions, but let's also use human judgement to understand where those tools might fall short and act accordingly. In large part, that comes down to having data experts audit the tools and educate those who use them of their shortcomings.
- Yeah Python is great for beginners I think. List of introductory books: https://wiki.python.org/moin/IntroductoryBooks
Some written specifically for children. Don't know much about them, but they're worth looking into.
https://www.packtpub.com/application-development/python-proj...
https://www.nostarch.com/pythonforkids
- Here are the 3 new books mentioned in the article:
By the author of the article:
Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms - Hannah Fry https://www.amazon.com/Hello-World-Being-Human-Algorithms/dp...
Do Dice Play God?: The Mathematics of Uncertainty - Ian Stewart https://www.amazon.com/Dice-Play-God-Mathematics-Uncertainty...
The Art of Statistics: How to Learn from Data - David Spiegelhalter https://www.amazon.com/Art-Statistics-How-Learn-Data/dp/1541...
