Does Autocorrect Make Life Better?
Systemic failures in machine learning: a cautionary tale. Data science can reduce friction and inconvenience in our everyday lives by applying to many products and businesses. Photo by Gertrūda Valasevičiūtė on Unsplash Every device and service we use is embedded with crafted machine learning models. We become ever more free to focus on what matters in life as they tirelessly remove all irritations and burdens from our lives. What are the chances of this becoming a reality? Taking stock of the many ways machine learning fails us in everyday life is crucial if we ever hope to realize the potential of these technologies. Among the many forms of psychopathy manifest in chatbots are racist image classifiers, sexist recruitment tools, and racist image classifiers. We should instead consider one of the most common forms of machine learning failure, one which affects minorities just as much as majorities: autocorrection. Digital assistance can be as simple as autoco...