Facebook says it will look for racial bias in its algorithms

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07.22.20

Good morning! Today: Facebook will hunt for racial bias in its algorithms, and Venus might be teeming with volcanoes. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day.

Facebook says it will look for racial bias in its algorithms

The news: Facebook says it is setting up new internal teams to look for racial bias in the algorithms that drive its main social network and Instagram, reports the Wall Street Journal. In particular, the investigations will address the adverse effects of machine learning—which can encode implicit racism in training data—on Black, Hispanic and other minority groups.

Why it matters: The last few years have seen increasing numbers of researchers and activists highlight the problem of bias in AI and the disproportionate impact it has on minorities. Facebook, which uses machine learning to curate the daily experience of its 2.5 billion users, is well overdue an internal assessment of this kind. There is already evidence that Facebook’s ad-serving algorithms discriminate by race.

Under pressure: Facebook has a history of dodging accusations of bias in its systems. It has taken several years of bad press and pressure from civil rights groups to get to this point. The move is welcome. But it should be part of a wider overhaul that also grapples with policies that give platforms to racist politicians, white-supremacist groups and Holocaust deniers. Read the full story.

— Will Douglas Heaven

Venus might be teeming with dozens of volcanoes that were recently active

Scientists have identified 37 volcanic structures on Venus that may still be active today. The results upend long-held assumptions that the second planet from the sun is largely dormant.

What we thought: Unlike Earth, Venus doesn’t have plate tectonics that are constantly moving and gradually shaping its surface, leaving many scientists to assume the planet had been inactive for perhaps the last half-billion years. But this assumption has never been truly tested.

The new findings: They are focused around ring-like structures called coronae, upwells of volcanic material from the planet’s interior, which are a sign of geological activity. The researchers developed simulations of what the planet’s active coronae should look like based on thermal data. The researchers then looked for these characteristics in infrared images of Venus’s topography. Altogether, they identified and mapped 133 corona-like structures, 37 of which were likely large volcanic hot spots that have erupted within the last couple of million years or so (that’s very recent in geological time scales). Read the full story.

—Neel V. Patel

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The top ten must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 We need to know more about coronavirus vaccine side effects 💉
“Mild” does not mean the same thing to you as it does to a Phase II trial researcher. (Wired $)
+ Will covid-19 become the new common cold? (UnHerd)

2 Trying to calculate risks? You need a color-coded chart
Is a dinner party okay? The dentist’s? A small wedding? These tools can help us work it out. (Wired $)
+ Germany is recruiting 4,000 music fans to study how coronavirus spreads. (The Guardian)
+ Germany’s coronavirus response shows the importance of good science communication. (CNBC)

3 The US has accused Chinese hackers of trying to steal covid-19 research
The charges are mostly symbolic, since they’re unlikely to ever step foot in a US courtroom. (AP)

4 South Korea’s coronavirus quarantine app had major security flaws
Attackers could see the names and real-time locations of people who were isolating. (NYT $)

5 The House has voted to ban TikTok from federal employees’ devices
The crackdown continues. (Politico)
+ TikTok has said it will hire 10,000 people in the US in the next three years. (Axios)
+ US investors are considering buying a majority stake in TikTok. (Business Insider)

6 Apple has promised to go carbon-neutral by 2030
Tech giants are competing to unveil climate pledges, and that’s no bad thing. (BBC)

7 Bangladesh’s economy is run on Facebook
There are hundreds of thousands of sellers plying their trade through the platform there. (Rest of World)

8 Twitter is cracking down on the QAnon conspiracy
It said the ban will affect more than 150,000 accounts. (NPR)

9 How to spot fake Amazon reviews 🔍
This is why you should never rely on just the star rating alone. (The Markup)
+ Jeff Bezos added $13 billion to his net worth in a single day. (CNET)
+ Amazon has expanded its robot delivery trials to more states. (The Verge)

10 Randonauting is the fun activity of the summer
It’s a way to pass the time. And you might coincidentally break the simulation we’re all living in. (The Atlantic)

Don't settle for half the story.

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Quote of the Day

“It will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better. Something I don’t like saying about things, but that’s the way it is.”

—President Donald Trump abruptly departs from his usually rosy projections about the coronavirus in the first virus-focused televised news conference since April.

Top image credit: NeONBRAND | Unsplash

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—Charlotte

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