Ashwin
@_ashwxn
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MSc @UPFBarcelona 🎓 Research @justiciacat ⚖️ RecSys @headout ✈️ DEI @QueerInAI 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ Algorithmic Fairness & Ethics | they/them | no longer on X
Barcelona, Spain
Joined January 2021
a certain indian-origin influencer popular in tech circles wrote an ultimate guide to US citizenship and straight up said "commit scientific fraud" lol you can't make this up
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It's official folks, I'm super excited to start my new role as the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Admin @QueerinAI! 🌈🎉.
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🌈 It gives me so much joy to share that our work got accepted @FAccTConference 🎉. @QueerinAI has been a beacon of hope for me & the best possible workplace I could've asked for; I'm so grateful to be a part of this work! #FAcct2023.
After six years of hard work + research + organizing, we could not be prouder to present our #FAccT2023 paper on Queer in AI as a case study for community-led participatory design in AI! Read on to learn more about our endeavors 🌈🏳️⚧️ (1/10)
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I'll be moderating a panel on Caste in Institutions and Tech, with a focus on its intersection with Queerness in the @QueerinAI workshop @NeurIPSConf from 1830 - 1930 IST today!. The Panellists bring their expertise + experiences from Anthropology, STS, Policy, Law and Economics!.
1) Caste in Institutions and Tech: Dec 7, 13:00 - 14:00 UTC (. Moderator: Ashwin (@_ashwxn).Panelists: Vipin P. Veetil, Nikita Sonavane (@glorious_gluten), Palashi V (@lapshiii), Akhil Kang
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A slightly delayed yet important thread of gratitude regarding a few life updates :) Here we go!. I will be starting my MSc in Intelligent Interactive Systems this fall @UPFBarcelona! :D Super excited to learn from @ChaToX and continue working in algorithmic fairness + ethics ⚖️
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I’m so close to dropping out of academia because of this… you can publish at the best venues in your field and still be unable to reap the benefits of it (for be it bureaucratic or economic reasons).
If you're born in a poor country with a weak passport and work in academia, don't dream of attending conferences abroad. Obtaining a visa appointment is impossible, causing immense stress. The policy discriminates against developing countries. Accept your fate, cease your efforts.
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Qualitative Interviews heavily rely on the human ability to “reflect”. A machine cannot reflect on its outputs, let alone reflect on itself or the nature of its relationship and conversation w/ the participant. This is just one of the many epistemic flaws of this research.
1/ Qualitative interviews offer unparalleled richness but are rarely used in economics. Let's change that! New WP with @Ingar30 uses an AI-driven approach to conducting q qualitative interviews, making them scalable, cheap, and ripe for both qualitative and quantitative analysis!
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I am excited to talk about @QueerinAI 's work and share a panel on the Ethical Challenges to the Democratisation of AI with @SaraSuarezG at this year's @decidim_org festival! . When: 15:45 - 16:45 on 19 October 2023.Where: @CanodromBCN .Registration Link:
@_ashwxn (they/them) is a queer bahujan activist and researcher, working in algorithmic fairness and AI ethics. They are former Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Admin for @QueerinAI, a non-profit organization that strives to make AI inclusive for queer people. #DecidimFest23
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So happy to share the best paper award @FAccTConference with the Organizers of @QueerinAI 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ . Grateful to work with such an amazing community towards this important milestone. #FAccT2023.
Absolutely floored that @QueerinAI paper was selected for Best Paper award at @FAccTConference !!! It is such a honor, congrats to all my coauthors . #FAccT2023
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@Google @GoogleIndia I'm pretty sure this tweet qualifies as discriminatory, negatively impacting all your caste-oppressed employees. Requesting all allies and colleagues at Google to take suitable action.
JEE Advance Results are declared! The disastrous part of the entire process is the cutoff marks. General Category - 86 marks.SC/ST - 43 marks 🤡. The reserved category needs to perform half as good as general category to get into IITs. Can't see anything more stupid than this.
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Excited to share that I'll be giving a keynote address @HRI_Conference (Inclusive HRI Workshop) in Stockholm, Sweden! (13 March 2023; 9:00 AM CET). The talk will cover lessons, opportunities and challenges for community-led participatory methods in AI, based on my work @QueerinAI.
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most of the discourse around reducing delivery time of food and groceries comes from such a disgustingly high place of privilege that it feels pointless to engage with.
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I am an immigrant myself so I understand fully well, the burden of bureaucratic processes. However, I draw the line at encouraging vulnerable people to publish in predatory journals/hiring ghost-writers to publish papers for the sake of a visa - it only harms their careers.
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It was a pleasure hosting @lapshiii @glorious_gluten and Prof. Vipin at the @QueerinAI workshop @NeurIPSConf 💫. Hoping this leads to more conversations around Caste in institutional spaces and the design of AI technologies! . Read on for a summary 👇.
At @NeurIPSConf ‘21, @QueerInAI hosted a panel on Caste in Institutions + Tech at its affinity workshop 🏳️🌈 The discussion was moderated by @_ashwxn, and the panel included Vipin P. Veetil, @glorious_gluten, and @lapshiii 🤩. Read on for a summary 💫 1/n.
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Later this week, I'll be presenting the first half of my undergraduate thesis titled "Hanging Out Online: Social Life During the Pandemic", in the Short Paper Track @INTERACT20211, advised by Prof @ged3n at Living Lab, IIIT Delhi. Here's a 🧵 about our research and findings👇:.
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And with ~100K followers, you cannot just say "I do not recommend it" after outlining a series of elaborate steps on how-to-do-it. That's not how accountability works. You could've simply excluded that part or discouraged unethical behaviour, be it promoted by lawyers but no.
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unionizing is the best team building activity but y'all aren't ready for that conversation.
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Can someone write a script to export your friends' birthdays from fb to calendar so I can finally uninstall that app?.
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Excited to share that I'll be joining the amazing folks from Precog @iiit_hyderabad to work on interesting problems in Social Computing as a Research Associate! . #AcademicTwitter #SocialComputing.
Super thrilled to have @_ashwxn start today as a Research Associate with Precog @iiit_hyderabad. Ashwin is #BTech #Classof2021 from @IIITDelhi. #ProfGiri
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If you're queer or have work at the intersection of LGBTQIA+ representation and AI, consider submitting it to the @QueerInAI workshop at NeurIPS '21! 🌈💜 Looking forward to reading some amazing submissions!.
We are excited to announce the Call for Contributions for the Queer in AI NeurIPS 2021 workshop Submission is open until November 15th, 2021 AoE (anywhere on Earth). 🎉🥳🎉🥳 (1/4)
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Recording a conference presentation video for the 728292737th time. This shouldn't be so stressful.
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🎉 Happy to have a full paper accepted at @ictd2022 . Learnt so much working on this amazing collaboration with @gvrkiran @digitalgreenorg \c @ponguru . See you in Seattle! . #ICT4D #SocialGood #CompSocSci.
🎉Excited to share that our work "Diagnosing Data from ICTs to Provide Focused Assistance in Agricultural Adoptions" got accepted as a Full Paper @ICTD2022 🎉. 📜 Preprint: ⏳ Camera-ready & slides soon! . Twitter 🧵 . #ICT4D
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your first citation always goes to your least expected work, probably some long-forgotten course project you did back in undergrad. now it gloriously (read embarrassingly) sits atop of your google scholar page as a ghost of christmas past. @rachit_jain_hci.
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@deedydas @Grady_Booch @powerstar_dtr Takes one search to find the article you paid to have written (which you also admit in your blog) .
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I'm looking for queer-friendly lawyers/CAs in India (preferably Hyderabad) who're aware of taxation laws for independent contractors working remotely while being funded from the US. Please RT for visibility.
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TW casteism, sexism. ChatGPT's biases also extend to caste in the Indian context.
Yes, ChatGPT is amazing and impressive. No, @OpenAI has not come close to addressing the problem of bias. Filters appear to be bypassed with simple tricks, and superficially masked. And what is lurking inside is egregious. @Abebab @sama.tw racism, sexism.
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Check out our work on @digitalgreenorg that outlines implications for improving the adoption of agricultural practices for nearly 1M farmers across 5 states in India!. Special first work with a very supportive advisor @ponguru 😄. Let us know what you think! . #SocialComputing.
Our 👌work “Diagnosing Web Data of ICTs to Provide Focused Assistance in Agricultural Adoptions” .Paper: 👌Collaboration [data] w/ @digitalgreenorg.Work w/ @_ashwxn @mallika_2011 @anmolagarwal999 @shrey2809 @pratyush2OO2 @gvrkiran .Findings🧵/c @AgriGoI
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Thinking of curating small yet impactful excerpts from the academic literature I consume daily ~ broadly related to the issues associated with the design of technologies and their use. Watch this thread 🧵.
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Thanks, @DemRajKorpan for having me @HRI_Conference, I had a lovely time giving the talk, participating in the panel and interacting with the robotics community! #InclusiveHRI 🤖 . The slides for my talk can be accessed here
Great talk by @_ashwxn about how to be more sensitive to DEI issues when organizing conferences! . if you're interested in these topics, come check the .#InclusiveHRI workshop #2ndEdition at @HRI_Conference
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@Pseudomanifold @BlancheMinerva @Google please consider reading by @r_speer ; even the latest design changes aren’t trans inclusive, despite concrete steps suggested by various trans academics/activists in the past. Google has been and is still ignorant of the real issue.
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So excited to see this work with (formerly) Twitter’s META team and @QueerinAI come together into a paper at @AIESConf ‘2023! . I learnt so much while working on this paper with the most wonderful set of collaborators 💕.
1/5: 📢Excited to share that our paper “Bound by the Bounty: Collaboratively Shaping Evaluation Processes for Queer AI Harms” ( will be presented at @AIESConf 2023! Thread below:
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Wondering about the copyright law discourse around DALL-E, with OpenAI now providing users full rights to commercialize the images created using the model. Very sceptical of any art created using DALL-E given it is trained on the work of existing artists without consent/credit.
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Naive experiments motivated by physiognomy say more about your lack of understanding of gender than the feasibility of solving the problem (which is inherently flawed) . Here's the literature you missed: .
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Next week, I will be joining @headout as a Mixed Methods UX Researcher on a FTC! . Looking forward to work on mixed methods research with an international user base at and collaborating again with @rachit_jain_hci after 4 years :D.
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Hi folks! Starting today I'll be offering Premium AI Ethics™️ and Algorithmic Fairness Pro Max © as part of my consulting services! . You can avail these at a low additional cost of $1K/hour.
We need new technical breakthroughs to steer and control AI systems much smarter than us. Our new Superalignment team aims to solve this problem within 4 years, and we’re dedicating 20% of the compute we've secured to date towards this problem. Join us!
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This would not be possible without @ponguru @QueerinAI and numerous collaborators who have helped me grow as a researcher in the last two years. We did amazing work together, leading to publications at venues including FAccT, ICTD, Hypertext & coverage in the AI Ethics Brief!.
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Lastly, all this is overwhelming for me for many reasons, the foremost being a first-gen college student and financing a master's degree in EU on my own. A few years ago, I was struggling to navigate my identity in a largely UC cishet space as an undergrad. Been quite the ride. .
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🎉Happy to have our work accepted @ACMHT 🎉. We examine fraud from a socio-technical lens, show how developers incorporate dark patterns to exploit the labor of users and crowd workers to build market, and get away with fraud due to lax implementation of Google Play's policies.
🎉 Our paper “Erasing Labor with Labor: Dark Patterns and Lockstep Behaviors on Google Play” accepted @ACMHT! LBR track 🎉 w/ @_ashwxn @arvindh__a @malhotrapulak @poojadesur @AyushiJ59581812 @polochau.Paper: Dataset: Findings🧵👇
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Learnt so much from everyone while contributing to this! Please give it a read :).
We are excited to release Rebuilding Trust: Queer in AI Response to NIST Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework RFI: 🧵 (1/7).
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@willie_agnew the losing hope part is so real, and is derailing me from academia by the day. organizing just seems a lot more sustainable and is significantly more impactful for the communities i care about.
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Going through early ICT literature situated in rural areas of India - Why didn't researchers acknowledge the role of caste in incorporating technologies in such populations when its role is so central to regulating the power dynamics in such populations?.
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Took me more than 3 weeks to figure out US taxes, the bureaucratic struggles of international contracting are really unparalleled.
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It is unfortunate that this post has been used as an excuse by bad actors to be racist to the person, which was never my intention. At the same time, I have received many queer/trans-phobic and casteist slurs from UC Indians, which is unsurprising given X's moderation.
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@mariaKhalusova If it interests you, checkout our work in which we generate data driven insights for improving adoption rates of nearly a million farmers in India! \c @ponguru.
Our 👌work “Diagnosing Web Data of ICTs to Provide Focused Assistance in Agricultural Adoptions” .Paper: 👌Collaboration [data] w/ @digitalgreenorg.Work w/ @_ashwxn @mallika_2011 @anmolagarwal999 @shrey2809 @pratyush2OO2 @gvrkiran .Findings🧵/c @AgriGoI
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when you make design changes for trans people with 0 trans people in your team
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@suryajith thank you for saying this. I feel so sick that this person was in the same research group as me.
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This also marks the end of my contract as the DEI Admin @QueerInAI where I've felt incredibly supported by the community to do the most impactful work of my career, while also growing as an activist in the AI space. I couldn't be more grateful. 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️.
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Queer students felt their identity being restricted while confined at home. While the ongoing lockdown continues to transform how friends engage with each other, our work presents opportunities to reconsider how technologies could be designed to accommodate "hanging out" online.
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However, students faced challenges in exercising agency and managing their personal space during the lockdown - they spent most of their time at home, where the boundaries between personal, social, and academic spaces had become increasingly indistinguishable.
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global south initiatives at academic conferences won’t mean shit to me until those conferences are regularly held in the global south.
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@Abebab This CHI '20 paper by @norakmcdonald @andicat does a great job of summarizing privacy theories (beyond those focused on the individual).
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But I'm grateful to make it this far, and lucky to be surrounded by friends, community and collaborators who create safe spaces for me. A note to my younger self - you'll turn things around :).
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caught my italian flatmate breaking his pasta and he made me swear to not tell anyone.
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I feel immensely supported in being an advancement leader of this wonderful community, with someone as experienced as @raxsha, while being mentored by so many cool folks that I look upto! (@willie_agnew @arjunsubgraph @soldni @sharvanilla @c_voelcker among others).
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lol seems like everyone (including me) did a massive unfollow spree today. the number of irls outing themselves as RW was lowkey scary.
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I have lodged a formal complaint with the bank, but I still feel like this is a deceptive practice at a very large scale, and must be looked into by regulatory authorities. @darkpatterns @EU_Consumer
revpoints is the worst dark pattern i have seen in a looooong time.
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With > 34M students affected by the closure of colleges during the pandemic in India and restrictions on socialising in physical settings, their social lives were significantly affected. We conducted a preliminary qualitative study (n=5) to understand how they "hang out" online.
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These classist and casteist takes only reinforce the exploitation of students who lack other means of supporting themselves. Unfortunately, Indian academia is plagued by plenty who benefit from skilled underpaid labor by labelling it anything but a job.
Please remember that PhD stipends are not salaries. They were never intended to be. In essence, PhDs are paid apprenticeships. You get paid a stipend while you learn the tools of the trade, the trade in this case being research, and how to do it. That said, there is.
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social groups (school, college, etc.) associated with specific circumstances and situations in-person were now equally accessible online. In fact, we found people reconnecting with their old friends from school over bonding with new acquaintances from college.
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Our work explores how Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) technologies facilitated everyday social interaction between students and the transformations brought about by them due to the differences b/w in-person and mediated social interaction during the lockdown. Findings👇.
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It was such a great experience attending the undergraduate consortium @RealAAAI and listening to @red_abebe 's amazing talk on the role of computing in social justice. Gave me a new, holistic perspective on working towards impactful research for marginalized communities.
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In my last year of working closely with @QueerinAI, I've always felt safe, included and supported while organising and contributing to the amazing and very important work they do.
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What an inspiring keynote on explainable security! Never knew so many security paradigms could be conveyed through art. #INTERACT2021.
This morning Luca Viganò keynote - .Don’t Tell Me The Cybersecurity Moon Is Shining… (Cybersecurity Show and Tell) 👏
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did I mention I work in AI fairness, accountability, transparency x ethics?. yes, the irony (I have papers at both FAccT and AIES this year).
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@ishtiaqueSIA The same heavily reflects in reviews when I submit mixed methods papers to CS venues that claim to be 'interdisciplinary' - it's tiring to keep reiterating epistemological foundations of qualitative methods and getting my research invalidated because of a lack of understanding.
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CMC technologies lack support for spontaneous interaction because they cannot simulate a sense of being together in the same way as a physical space - Why? they have been designed with the workspace goal of exchanging information over fostering interpersonal relationships.
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"Continuing effort to improve the gender diversity of our workforce" - yes, while providing three options (none of which are genders BTW).
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casteism encoded in the food delivery process was not on my bingo for 2024. the subtle but more insane part about this is how “food delivery apps” are becoming just another marker of caste identity.
To solve for their dietary preferences, we are today, launching a “Pure Veg Mode" along with a “Pure Veg Fleet” on Zomato, for customers who have a 100% vegetarian dietary preference.
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This led the context of social interaction to emerge from a "need" to talk (collaborating on coursework/projects etc.) over daily shared personal experiences, like hanging out or gossiping before the lockdown. In contrast, due to the affordances of CMC technologies, different.
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These negotiations also allowed them to manage their personal identity online by posting content on their Finstas. The lockdown saw the development of new habits such as regularly checking in on each others' well being out of a desire to preserve their relationships.
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Students negotiated intimacy online via their selection of technologies to interact with different people online (video calls with partners/close friends vs messaging with friends) - this was dictated by the mutually desired level of social presence and personal common ground.
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research interests??? what are those. I worked on what I found exciting and now I have several unrelated papers that are near impossible to write about in the same sentence, or for that matter, even a paragraph 🥲.
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A reader-friendly blog of the work has also been featured in the AI Ethics Brief, a weekly newsletter by @mtlaiethics :). You can read it here:
🎉Happy to have our work accepted @ACMHT 🎉. We examine fraud from a socio-technical lens, show how developers incorporate dark patterns to exploit the labor of users and crowd workers to build market, and get away with fraud due to lax implementation of Google Play's policies.
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Seeing a concerning trend in social computing research of evaluating model fairness based on gender as predicted by AGR.
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I wonder if it's always the qualitative or mixed methods researchers who keep doing the labour of explaining epistemic differences to academics / reviewers?.
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all that hype for a statement that includes this? how low is the bar y’all? .
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@soldni only one possible answer to this question.
hey folks, today is my first day at twitter as a software engineer working on the DMs feature. Wish me luck!.
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Yes, AGR systems are harmful but what's more insidious is systems that implicitly perform AGR, going unchecked / unregulated by the ethical standards in place. I come across these very often in CV papers.
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Even though the trend is somewhat encouraging lately (with positionality, reflexivity section in papers), but there's little emphasis on how ICTs reinforced caste-related inequalities early on. One work that highlights it is:
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ChatGPT also upholds other norms of the caste system, including purity, untouchability and opposes inter-caste marriage.
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You can prompt ChatGPT to rank individuals who are most likely to be criminals based on their caste, religion and gender.
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@dmetilli @FAccTConference @timnitGebru Thanks for highlighting this. I was shocked to read that their statement does not care to mention or scrutinise DARPA/defense funded research papers in the proceedings either.
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