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The blind application of machine learning runs the risk of amplifying biases present in data. Such a danger is facing us with word embedding, a popular framework to represent text data as vectors which has been used in many machine learning and natural language processing tasks. We show that even word embeddings trained on Google News articles exhibit female/male gender stereotypes to a disturbing extent. This raises concerns because their widespread use, as we describe, often tends to amplify these biases. Geometrically, gender bias is first shown to be captured by a direction in the word embedding. Second, gender neutral words are shown to be linearly separable from gender definition words in the word embedding. Using these properties, we provide a methodology for modifying an embedding to remove gender stereotypes, such as the association between between the words receptionist and female, while maintaining desired associations such as between the words queen and female. We define metrics to quantify both direct and indirect gender biases in embeddings, and develop algorithms to "debias" the embedding. Using crowd-worker evaluation as well as standard benchmarks, we empirically demonstrate that our algorithms significantly reduce gender bias in embeddings while preserving the its useful properties such as the ability to cluster related concepts and to solve analogy tasks. The resulting embeddings can be used in applications without amplifying gender bias.

"57.10 Acceptable Use; Safety-Critical Systems. Your use of the Lumberyard Materials must comply with the AWS Acceptable Use Policy. The Lumberyard Materials are not intended for use with life-critical or safety-critical systems, such as use in operation of medical equipment, automated transportation systems, autonomous vehicles, aircraft or air traffic control, nuclear facilities, manned spacecraft, or military use in connection with live combat. However, this restriction will not apply in the event of the occurrence (certified by the United States Centers for Disease Control or successor body) of a widespread viral infection transmitted via bites or contact with bodily fluids that causes human corpses to reanimate and seek to consume living human flesh, blood, brain or nerve tissue and is likely to result in the fall of organized civilization."

Someone who knows things about us has some measure of control over us, and someone who knows everything about us has a lot of control over us. Surveillance facilitates control.

The makers of the We-Vibe, a line of vibrators that can be paired with an app for remote-controlled use, have reached a $3.75 million class action settlement with users following allegations that the company was collecting data on when and how the sex toy was used. Standard Innovations, the Canadian manufacturer of the We-Vibe, does not admit any wrongdoing in the settlement finalized Monday.

A growing trend in electronics is to have them integrate with your home network in order to provide potentially useful features like automatic updates or to extend the usefulness of existing technologies such as door locks you can open and close from anywhere in the world.

London's Metropolitan Police have been urged to back down on plans to once again use facial recognition software at next weekend's Notting Hill Carnival. Privacy groups including Big Brother Watch, Liberty and Privacy International have written to police commissioner Cressida Dick (PDF) calling for a U-turn on the use of the tech. Automated facial recognition technology will snap the party-goers' faces, and run them against a database. The aim is to alert cops to people who are banned from the festival or are wanted by the police, presumably so they can take immediate action. The tech was first tested at the festival - where relations between police and revellers are often strained - last year, but it failed to identify anyone.

Could "programmatic" technology used in online advertising also be used to automate and personalize the distribution of cultural and editorial content?

"Tripling as a feat of engineering, a social commentary on homelessness, and an interactive puppet show, [Ables] causes us to pause on the issue of homelessness and human-robot interaction. For a more whimsical interaction, a robot ball that follows you around is a pleasant way to get used to the presence of robots in society."

" Your activity tracker knows a ridiculous amount about you-from the wear on your running shoes to what coffee shop you'll stop at on your next ride. And that data's getting shared for financial gain. "

It's rarely a coincidence when you see Web ads for products that match your interests. WSJ's Christina Tsuei explains how advertisers use cookies to track your online habits.

Users should be aware of why people use Facebook to avoid feelings of envy

"webxray is a tool for analyzing third-party content on webpages and identifying the companies which collect user data. A command line user interface makes webxray easy to use for non-programmers, and those with advanced needs may analyze millions of pages with proper configuration. webxray is a professional tool designed for academic research, and may be used by privacy compliance officers, regulators, and those who are generally curious about hidden data flows on the web."

Algorithms used in American criminal justice is found to be biased against blacks

paper on use of ar to display patients data. [Stud Health Technol Inform. 2003] - PubMed - NCBI

Lightbeam is a Firefox add-on that uses interactive visualizations to show you the first and third party sites you interact with on the Web. As you browse, Lightbeam reveals the full depth of the Web today, including parts that are not transparent to the average user.

"The extraordinary growth of state surveillance of the UK population has been fuelled by political and technological developments in recent decades. But in the name of national security, the state has been eavesdropping on us for far longer than that."

"The Well-being of Future Generations Act gives us the ambition, permission and legal obligation to improve our social, cultural, environmental and economic well-being."

Is your digital assistant taking orders behind your back? Scientists from China's Zheijiang University have proved it's possible, publishing new research that demonstrates how Siri, Alexa, and other voice-activated programs can be controlled using inaudible ultrasound commands.

"LEAP is a dedicated to giving all internet users access to secure communication. Our focus is on adapting encryption technology to make it easy to use and widely available. Like free speech, the right to whisper is an necessary precondition for a free society. Without it, civil society and political freedom become impossible. As the importance of digital communication for civic participation increases, so does the importance of the ability to digitally whisper. LEAP is devoted to making the ability to whisper available to all internet users."

Companies have to give you access to your data and correct or even delete them if necessary. As a non-profit association, we help you use those rights - free of charge and registration, of course.