the pigeon in the haystack - design before and after the fact
TRANSCRIPT
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The pigeon in the haystack
Dietmar Offenhuber Public Policy and Urban Affairs Northeastern University [email protected]
What do we talk about when we talk about bias?
“Petabytes allow us to say: "Correlation is enough." We can stop looking for models. We can analyze the data without hypotheses about what it might show. We can throw the numbers into the biggest computing clusters the world has ever seen and let statistical algorithms find patterns where science cannot.” !Chris Anderson. 2008. “The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete.” Wired Magazine, June 27.
Quantitative models as a way to make society legible (= impose legibility)
!James C. Scott, 1999, Seeing Like a State
Source: spurious correlations, www.tylervigen.com
Drawing on the most recent neuroscience research, his own research and inventions in artificial
intelligence, and compelling thought experiments, he describes his new theory of how the neocortex (the thinking part of the brain) works: as a self-organizing hierarchical system of pattern
recognizers
“A decade-old toasted cheese sandwich said to bear an image of the Virgin Mary has sold on the eBay auction website for $28,000.”
BBC news, Nov. 23, 2004
Burrhus Frederic Skinner. 1947. “Superstition in the Pigeon.” Journal of Experimental Psychology (38)
“there is a close relationship between pattern discovery and superstition since humans and animals alike excel at finding structures
where there are none.” — Alexander Riegler
Truth and Bias
Bias as a pattern of systematic error
Case Study Boston
• Two different Interfaces (Citizens Connect and SeeClickFix), integrated with the same CRM and 4+ years of data
Opacity through transparency
Urban Entropy (2015), Dietmar Offenhuber, Ars Electronica Center
When we talk about bias, we actually mean implicit assumptions
Eric Schmidt: Every 2 Days We Create As Much Information As We Did Up To 2003
Sorting out CitiesNational Museum of Science, Tokyo collaboration w/ Ars Electronica Futurelab
NASA Night lights composite
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/NightLights/
Implicit assumptions are shaped by design
P. Morville
interfaces regulate spatial behavior
Dodge, Martin, and Rob Kitchin. 2004. “Flying through Code/space: The Real Virtuality of Air Travel.” Environment and Planning A 36 (2): 195–212.
Infrastructure legibility
Kevin Lynch – the Perceptual Form of the City 1954-59