'Noise in, noise out' may make AI less smart

+ new science on alcohol use disorder US Edition - Today's top story: 'Noise' in the machine: Human differences in judgment lead to problems for AI [View in browser]( US Edition | 19 May 2024 [The Conversation] [The Conversation]( Happy Sunday − and welcome to the best of The Conversation U.S. Here are a few of our recently published stories: - [How a British military march became the distinctive sound of American graduations]( - [Attempted assassination of Slovak prime minister follows country’s slide into political polarization]( Garbage in, garbage out. People have long used that expression to describe how poor-quality inputs – whether data, food or anything else – tend to produce bad outputs. And it’s as true for generative artificial intelligence as for anything else. With AI, the main concern I’ve read about is how to avoid infecting the machine with human biases such as racial and gender prejudices. But there’s another source for errors in human judgment: noise. And that data is being fed into AI systems. Noise refers to variation in how people make judgments of the same problem or situation, explains Mayank Kejriwal, a computer scientist at the University of Southern California, in [one of the articles published last week]( that our regular readers most enjoyed. Well-researched examples include judges issuing different judgments for a similar case – sometimes depending on the weather or the winner of a local football game – and insurance adjusters offering different estimates for comparable claims. And if noise is in the human-generated data, that same noise will likely end up in ChatGPT or any other generative AI program, resulting in messy answers to even seemingly commonsense questions. “Researchers still don’t know whether or how to weigh AI’s answers in that situation,” Kejriwal writes, “but a first step is acknowledging that the problem exists.” Bryan Keogh Managing Editor Readers' picks [‘Noise’ in the machine: Human differences in judgment lead to problems for AI]( Mayank Kejriwal, University of Southern California Just as human biases show up in machine learning systems, so, too, do people’s vagaries and vicissitudes. - [Why do people hate people?]( Kristine Hoover, Gonzaga University; Yolanda Gallardo, Gonzaga University It can be easy to mistake feelings like fear and anger as hate. When biases are acted out in harmful ways, however, speaking up can help stop hate from getting worse. - [How the manosphere found its way into the Black community]( Steven Dashiell, Morgan State University The Black hosts of the ‘Fresh & Fit’ podcast speak in the parlance of social justice movements, but apply it, in a twisted way, to justify misogyny. - [Preying on white fears worked for Georgia’s Lester Maddox in the ’60s − and is working there for Donald Trump today]( David Cason, University of North Dakota Ardent segregationist Lester Maddox became governor of Georgia after earning the admiration of white voters by refusing to integrate his chicken restaurant. - [Term limits aren’t the answer]( Charlie Hunt, Boise State University Very few Americans believe Congress is doing a good job. Some of them have a simple solution: Throw the bums out and institute term limits. But that creates more problems than it solves. 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Gomez, The University of Texas at San Antonio Comparing states’ populations on a range of demographic and socioeconomic data reveals similarities and differences across the nation. News Quiz 🧠- [The Conversation U.S. weekly news quiz]( Fritz Holznagel, The Conversation Test your knowledge with a weekly quiz drawn from some of our favorite stories. Questions this week on graduation, pollination and carbonation - - More of The Conversation Like this newsletter? You might be interested in our other weekly emails: • [Science Editors' Picks]( • [This Week in Religion]( • [Giving Today]( • [Politics Weekly]( • [Global Perspectives]( • [Global Economy & Business]( Follow us on social media: • [Threads]( • [Bluesky]( • [Mastodon]( • [Post.news]( • [LinkedIn]( • [Instagram]( • [Facebook]( • Or [get a daily text from us]( - - About The Conversation We're a nonprofit news organization dedicated to [helping academic experts share ideas with the public](. 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