We Are Not Machines

From determining who gets a job interview to who receives critical healthcare, opaque computational algorithms are increasingly making life-altering decisions about us, not with us. The dispassionate logic of code is replacing human judgment, and it is incumbent upon us to ensure that compassion and empathy remain at the heart of our systems, especially when human lives are at stake. Computers should make our lives better, not reduce us to cogs trapped in a machine of our own making. AI has the potential to make things worse. The decisions guided by AI are harder to understand and detangle from bias that those of human-created algorithms. They have the potential to codify historical bias into future decision making as they are trained on our historical data. We need to maintain constant vigilence against algorithmic thinking. Bias needs to be countered by increasing the diversity of the teams that create these algorithms. The potential harms of algorithms need to be statistically measured and prevented. The impact of algorithms on human lives need to be considered individually with empathy and with an eye toward harm reduction. Unfortunately empathy, compassion, and support for diversity seem to be in short supply. I really hope we can come together as a society to protect those most at risk from the algorithms that increasingly control their lives, however many people seem to applaud the marginalization and suffering of others who are not like them. We cannot counter the harms of mechanized thinking if we are unwilling to see one another as deserving of empaty and compassion. Searching for injustice is useless if we are unwilling to banish injustices from our society. We are not machines and should resist those who would let machines control us.