Uber passenger ratings and algorithmic discrimination

posted on 28 July, 2014 with tags ,

For a few hours today, Uber users could view their passenger rating thanks to a how-to posted by Aaron Landy.1 Uber gives both passengers and drivers ratings, probably by averaging the post-ride ratings each gets, and they affect whether riders can get picked up and whether drivers keep their jobs.

Passenger ratings like these raise two kinds of concerns: first, that opaque and inaccessible metrics don’t allow for recourse or even explanation; and second that driver ratings aren’t very consistent or reliable raw material for those metrics.

You hear stories from people who missed a pickup because of buggy notifications, for example, and those people all of a sudden just can’t catch a cab. Any kind of technical error can skew the ratings, but because they’re invisible they’re also treated as infallible.

But more fundamentally, when you condition catching a cab on how drivers rate passengers, you run the risk of amplifying human biases. We may think it’s ok for a rude or inconsiderate passenger to get low ratings, but what is the effect on people who speak with an accent, or people who have been drinking, or get picked up or dropped off outside a gay bar, or pregnant or nursing women?

It’s easy for somebody not used to being marginalized to say these ratings just provide an incentive to be kind and respectful. But it’s only from a position of privilege that one can know kindness and respect will result in a favorable rating.

It may seem strange to focus this much scrutiny on Uber, which is admittedly a luxury. But the questions raised come up in more basic issues of algorithmic discrimination. Just look at the metrics, currently being examined by New York regulators, that deny people even basic bank accounts.

Turning back to Uber: Passengers don’t know if drivers are trained to rate consistently or whether those ratings get audited or normalized in some way. Tech like Uber could be helping to erase discrimination in transportation, but if it’s not done thoughtfully it could just as easily entrench it much further.

Note: I originally wrote a version of this in response to a request for comment from The Guardian. That story has been published and incorporates quotes from the original that appear here too.

  1. Aaron happens to be Julie Samuels’s cousin. [↩]

Maira Kalman on copying and learning

posted on 28 July, 2014 with tags , , ,

Maira Kalman is one of my favorite illustrators, so I was excited to see this short documentary about her made by a project called Portraits in Creativity. I got the link from Kottke, who ran it under the headline “Copying is my way of learning.” I actually missed that line on the first and second pass, but found it the third time through. Here’s video and a transcript of that short section:

Copying is my way of learning, and when I copied the Bernard, I realized how extraordinarily difficult it was. Of course everything that’s fantastic looks so simple, and it’s fantastic to immerse yourself in somebody else’s painting and try to do a copy of it, which I thought was, you know, not bad.

Of course it’s not unique to Maira! Copying is an essential part of learning, and really the most identifiable part for most of us. Some artists, tempted by the myth of genius, feel a stigma around talking about copying. Nice to see somebody great like Maira Kalman address it directly.

Public domain shot of the NSA Utah Data Center

posted on 10 July, 2014 with tags , , , ,

Although the main point of my airship trip over the Utah Data Center was to announce the launch of Stand Against Spying, I did have a pretty great view of the facility. Inspired by Trevor Paglen’s efforts to supply a new “visual vocabulary” to the conversation about national intelligence, I got EFF to release one of the photos I took under a completely free CC0 waiver.

EFF-NSA-Utah-Data-Center-scaled

This is a low-res version. Click through to EFF or Wikimedia Commons to see the full high resolution version.

Valerie Simpson on sampling and creativity

posted on 10 July, 2014 with tags , , ,

I tuned in to an older episode of the public radio show “Song Travels” on a drive the other featuring performances and a discussion with Valerie Simpson. Simpson is a musician and with her husband made up the legendary married Ashford & Simpson songwriting duo, behind “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and a million other tunes.

I thought her comments on other artists sampling her recordings was interesting. Here’s a clip from the show, and a partial transcription:

 

I always think of it as a separate entity. I don’t, you know, I don’t get hung up on it. I’m glad that these young performers, you know, hear something and want to create another piece of music. I call it another piece, because usually they use so little of whatever was yours in their new thing, and then you claim a sizeable portion of it, so you have two things now in existence. And so, I’m cool with that.

…like I say, it’s another baby born.

She also talks in the clip about how different record deals throughout her career means she some sampling deals can be done without her input, but that artists often seek it anyway.

Of course it helps that Simpson gets paid for samples. But it strikes me as really cool that she sees artistic creativity as a positive sum effort, and that other people sampling her work doesn’t diminish that work at all.

Illegal spying below: my trip over Utah

posted on 28 June, 2014 with tags , , , , ,

I flew in an airship over the NSA’s Utah data center yesterday, as part of a joint action organized by Greenpeace and EFF. It was really a remarkable experience, and we were lucky enough to get it covered by a pretty wide range of media. Here’s a small sample:

The airship itself looked pretty incredible. EFF has more photos taken from the helicopter, but here’s one, credit to Greenpeace:

Utah Airship Flight

I also got some photos from in the airship itself. The obligatory selfie with me and Sim, the pilot for Greenpeace:

And of course some of the data center itself (here in the background):

More to come, both in terms of story and images. Follow the EFF blog to keep up!