Meta's AI Council & More

Another rant about Big Tech and AI

💖Motivation Meows💖

Hello, and welcome back to another edition of The Black Cat.

As always, here is some Good Black News.

Maria Rotilu’s OpenseedVC closed a $10 million fund to support founders in Europe and Africa. I believe she is the only Black woman solo general partner in Europe. Meanwhile, Mae Health, which focuses on addressing health disparities that impact Black women, closed an oversubscribed seed round with participation from RH Capital and Jumpstart Nova. Almost-unicorn Uncle Nearest Whisky has acquired the Voldka brand Square One, as reported by Bloomberg.

(I’m thinking of creating a little Wednesday supplement newsletter or something that just highlights all the Good Black News that comes out in a week. Should I do this?)

This month, I’m reading: La Fortune des Rougon by Zola

This weekend, I can’t stop listening to: Flamenco by Beyoncé

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💢From the Chatterbox💢

This week, Meta announced an AI advisory council filled with only white men. This week, me and my colleagues called that out. This week, our article was attacked by trolls and racists alike, showing a vitriolic underbelly of tech.

I was shocked, not by the fact that people were angry at us, but by how many of them willingly came out and said what most of us expected: that they don’t care about diversity, about minority voices, and are tired of hearing us talk about anything that has to do with inclusion. There were hundreds of comments, white men and even women piling on, saying they were tired of the “DEI” conversation and anything that brings it back up is passé. They don’t care, and they don’t have to care.

It was one of those moments where I felt a sense of doom in the world of technology. I didn’t want to be so extreme, but I kept thinking about the fact that technology that isn’t made with women or people of color in mind could literally kill us. When those trolls were piling on saying they didn’t care about inclusive tech, it felt like them giving the green light to whatever the future may bring, even and especially if that future didn’t have someone like me in it. I bring up this example often because I think it’s the easiest way to prove the point of what could happen with rampant innovation without intersectionality: women were not included in medical trials until around the 1970s, and the result of that has been death. Doctors just now are conducting the first cancer study on its impact on Black women — we had existed millenniums without anyone knowing what it did to us and why. And now we have healthcare using AI with algorithms trained on research by biased humans. Am I not supposed to feel even just a tiny bit on edge?

To make matters worse, nobody knows what they are doing. There has been little reassurance anywhere that bias in AI can get better because nobody knows how to fix it. Nobody is willing to fix their own biases; nonetheless, train a whole computer on how to suddenly build and shape this equitable world that humans haven’t and couldn’t even build for themselves. Then, to see men with money creating AI councils with only white men to advise them on, I’m assuming, how to make money from this revolution that will, as with everything Big Tech has touched, leave out what impact it could have on society and the people who live in it. If the stakes are as high as these Big Tech people are making it seem, then shouldn’t they be held accountable to them? Or was all of this just another excuse to gain more control and power over humanity, this time disguising that greed as something that could save the consumer, convincing them that they are too meager to save themselves?

In the backdrop of all of this was Google’s AI Overview, which, of course, has become a meme. The AI is faulty, and people have been asking Google Search random questions to see what random responses it would give. It’s hard to prove, but I suspect this has something to do with the $60 million deal Google cut with Reddit to train Google search algorithms on those forums. That is, I believe, why, when you Google a question, the first links that pop up are now Reddit forums rather than news articles. As an average person, that idea sounds so ridiculously stupid. One example of this faulty Google search that stuck out to me was what allegedly happened if you asked it if the U.S. has ever had a Muslim president. Google’s overview would say yes and then referenced Barack Obama. I can’t pinpoint why that answer feels so racially charged; maybe it was because back in ‘08, people calling Obama a Muslim was a fearmongering, racist, Islamaphobic talking point lobbed against him so the country wouldn’t elect him.

I just know, deep down, that Google’s overview got that answer in part from Reddit because that’s where these types of conspiracy theories are trolled out. Reddit is one of the top places where clusters of accounts gather to spread vile theories, sometimes with the goal of actually causing harm and danger to especially marginalized communities. Now, we are right in an election year, where the average American is going to Google simple talking points to educate themselves, and the first search result they will be greeted with will be responses trained from Reddit forums. Then underneath that response will be actual Reddit forums. And then, somewhere far down the line, there will be actual news on the topic. It’s baffling that a country already so divided by the hands of Big Tech is still flying at high speed on a train conducted at its whim.

I think now, more than ever, we as consumers need to start standing up more to tech giants so that we don’t lose a grip on our already increasingly plutocratic society. That’s why it’s the little things like having an AI council made up of only white men that really irks me. We’ve had this conversation before, so why are we still having it? We’ve had this conversation before, and so any decision that is made that blatantly overlooks these concerns is to be directly questioned. Do these leaders live in such a bubble that no one has told them our fears? Where is this shortfall on why we are not being listened to, and what can be done to put it? Where are the executives, the leadership boards, who in those rooms are speaking on behalf of the people rather than just profit. I just want to ask them one question— why is everyone in a position to win but us, and why no one will put us in the room to at least recite our eulogies?

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💫Kitty Talk💫

Here are some interesting articles I’ve read since we last met:

• TechCrunch, “Meta’s new AI council is composed entirely of white men”

• Financial Times, “Builder.ai: The wild ride of a Microsoft-backed tech unicorn”

• The Guardian, “Revealed: Magician David Copperfield accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women”