Add 250 words in 1.5 hrs

Last Name 1

Last Name 4

Your Name

Professor Huff

ENC 1101

08 July 2020

Thesis; Technology has a lot of challenges such as racism, however, it would be wrong to blame it on artificial intelligence because it was created by humans.

i. Even though technology has proven to have signs of racism, it would be undiplomatic to put the blame on artificial intelligence.

A. Humans created artificial intelligence, therefore, if anything should be blamed for racism, it should be humans.

1. According to the article by McWhorter, artificial intelligence lacks autonomy. It is something that is programmed by humans and prone to bugs and malfunctions. Therefore, if something was to go wrong, technology lacks the brain or morals to know what is right or wrong.

2. For example, the case of the twitterbot, the bot did not know it was making racist tweets. It only posted what was in its program.

B. Some people are stereotyped and technology portrays it.

1. We are all different and therefore some are stereotyped while others are not. Technology sometimes portrays how stereotypical a person is.

2. The case of Snapchat having an Asian caricature might have been because the programmer was stereotyped and wanted to show it.

ii. Discrimination by technology cannot be fully erased, however it can be reduced.

A. Discrimination happens in various ways therefore making it difficult to notice.

1. Sometimes, a simple act of discrimination happens, however, we fail to notice it, leading to escalation of the problem.

2. For instance, if the racist tweets by the twitter bots would have been taken lightly, the tweets would have spread and escalated to being shared by racist people thus leading to racism.

B. Man is to error, and to correct the error is divine.

1. No one is perfect, we all make mistakes, the thing about mistakes is that we can correct them.

2. When Google photos noticed that their app was labelling blacks as gorillas, it aptly reacted by correcting their app and reprogramming it.

iii. To reduce discrimination also involves trying to put in place measures that will prevent occurrence of a similar mistake.

A. To avoid cases of discrimination by technology, engineers and programmers should continuously update their systems, apps and websites to ensure they are up to date and therefore avoid any form of biasness.

1. In the current society, every day, something is branded as being racist. If someone is not up to date with the trends, he/she might do/ post something which is racist unintentionally.

2. For instance, the Snapchat tweets being posted by the tweetbot might have not been seen as racist earlier on, however, after a while the terms were considered as racist but the tweeter team were not yet aware.

B. Engineers and programmers should me more careful when designing apps, programs and websites.

1. Programmers and engineers should first test out their applications and programs while considering possible outcomes before launching them officially.

2. For instance, the case of Snapchat with the Asian caricature, perhaps if the team would have tried out the design first with other people, they would have noticed the possible outcomes and thus removed it from their systems.

Works Cited

Hong, Joo-Wha, and Dmitri Williams. "Racism, responsibility and autonomy in HCI: Testing

perceptions of an AI agent." Computers in Human Behavior 100 (2019): 79-84.

McWhorter, John. “Is Technology Capable of Racism?” The view, Time Inc., 2016, pp.23-25

Noble, Safiya Umoja. Algorithms of oppression: How search engines reinforce racism. nyu

Press, 2018.

Zgrzebnicki, Paweł. "Selected ethical issues in artificial intelligence, autonomous system

development and large data set processing." Studia Humana 6.3 (2017): 24-33.