They were both[Obama, Ito] focusing on AI's social effects and to how societal values can be built into AI.

So Ito's concern was probably that a group of people of similar characteristics(i.e white male geeks) is not diverse enough to address the world's social problems, especially when this group of people is not social enough; they're more comfortable talking to computers than to human beings.

This fits with what he says in the end Because the question is, how do we build societal values into AI? - he's more concerned about the builders themselves.

I do understand that as far as the social aspect goes, still I think that a white computer geek has much more in common with an Asian or black computer geek than with - say - an average white truck driver, and obviously the same applies to the other geeks as well. Basically once we control for the cultural aspect (which is correlated with ethnicity, but we controlled this out already), I don't think ethnicity by itself should matter much

In the U.S., a black software engineer is more likely to be able to design technology that helps keep people safe from police regardless of geekery and socioeconomic status.

Do you have anything to back it up, or is it a supposition?

Willing? Or able? You're saying it makes a difference in the ability itself. In either case this argument - well, it's not even much of an argument, merely a belief - is so absurd to me that frankly I can't believe you're serious, no offence.

Care to share any examples of what technologies is, in turn, a white software engineer more likely to be able to design? Or does this philosophy only work one way : )

Is designing medical software better left to be implemented by software engineers who themselves eg. battled cancer?

1. Able. Not that skin color itself affects any sort of intellectual ability, but race--including, importantly, the experiences people have because of their skin color--definitely impacts who you are and what you are good at.

2. White software engineers are better at designing racist software (mostly joking). Another half joke: white people are better at designing technology that gets taken seriously by the government and the public (i.e. their technology will be taken more seriously because they are white, not any special ability there). But seriously, white engineers would probably be better at designing technology for teaching other white people about race.

3. Yes, there are absolutely some parts of designing medical software that engineers who have battled cancer would be better at. Imagine you are making one of those medical devices that sits next to a cancer patient's bed post-chemo and shows a bunch of numbers. Now if you fought cancer, you've probably had lots of experience lying in that bed next to those screens, and you could have a much better intuition about how those screens should look and how they should present their visualizations in ways that make a patient more confident. Or imagine the software engineer wants to, you know, talk with some patients or doctors to understand what to make: the engineer who battled cancer will probably be much better understanding what the patients (and doctors) want.

I don't know the race of any software engineers I haven't met. Which is almost all of them. How could govt and the public know either? It seems strange to imagine it could matter.

Well, there are the famous ones. I'd bet facebook would have been treated differently if Mark Zuckerberg were black. You also probably automatically make guesses about people's race online. Race is a bit trickier, but it's not too hard to guess gender online (usernames, and things like this thing I just found on google: http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.php#Analyze)

I'm trying to stop reading news from US/UK sources. The depth of political discourse only goes as far as your self-appointed identity. Actions don't matter anymore.

White people are guilty of colonialism much like Catholic children inherit the Original Sin, that is, it's a means of control by anti-intellectuals.

I wouldn't support Trump, but the American Left is especially dangerous because it relies on gender / racial divide to get the most votes. In some twisted sense, the problem is not supposed to be solved.

Skin color does not make Obama an expert in race relations. If he had said "...but one of my concerns is that it’s been a predominately male gang of kids, mostly black, who are building the core computer science around AI..." there would have been riots in the streets. Tim Hunt's joke was taken out of context and almost ruined his career.

EDIT: To be clear, his white remark was fully intentional.

Can you share a link to the Dawkins' out-of-context joke?

I wrote the comment in a hurry, I meant Tim Hunt. Sorry, I'm going to fix the original post.

On 8 June 2015, during the 2015 World Conference of Science Journalists in Seoul, at a lunch for female journalists and scientists, Hunt was asked on short notice to give a toast (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Hunt). He made a self-deprecating comment and media vultures run with it. He was shamed out of the Royal Society and UCL.

> Skin color does not make Obama an expert in race relations.

Nor does your observation mean he's NOT an expert in race relations. You're making the same mistake as the people you criticize in applying generalities to specific cases.

We are biased to believe that minority groups are more fit to solve racial issues. But skin color is a not a sufficient condition for race relations expertise. Obama is not strictly right/wrong due to his identity. There is no other meaning to my previous post.

I would argue that it is not just bias. Indeed, not all people of color in the U.S. are experts on racism, but the vast majority of people with a good understanding of racism are people of color.

> Yeah, people are generally able to solve a problem only when they understand the problem. Direct experience is a valuable form of learning.

I'm sorry, but this is pseudo-reasoning to me. These are logically linked on the surface, yet extremely vague truisms that can only pass for some form of a coherent argument because they're so full of weasel words.

Based on the same principle you could argue that in order to improve car safety, to have a better chance at it, one needs to have had a life-threatening accident. Why not? After all, people generally are able to solve a problem when they understand it... and direct experience is a valuable form of learning... etc.

It really depends on the nature of the problem though, and the nature of this direct experience, and so forth. Painting the situation with such an overly broad brush doesn't lead to any meaningful conclusions.

For starters, first-hand experience is typically caused by symptoms of a problem, the underlying nature of a complex problem isn't readily apparent, or else it wouldn't be complex.

For instance getting sick from air pollution doesn't do anything to help you understand the nature of these pollutants, how they're emitted, what is the economical context and therefore possible countermeasures etc. It just reassures you that the symptoms of such pollution are a bad thing, which isn't that much of a discovery by itself.

Not everything is as simple as an itchy-scratchy situation, and we shouldn't pretend that it is, especially when it leads to racially biased claims.