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Machine Learning and its consequences

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Machine Learning has brought huge benefits in many domains and generated hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue. However, the second-order consequences of machine learning-based approaches can lead to potentially devastating outcomes. 

This article by Kashmir Hill in the New York Times is exceptional reporting on a very sensitive topic – the identification of abusive material or CSAM. 

As the parent of two young children in the COVID age, I rely on telehealth services and friends who are medical professionals to help with anxiety-provoking (yet often trivial) medical situations. I often send photos of weird rashes or bug bites to determine if it is something to worry about.  

In the article, a parent took a photo of their child to send to a medical professional. This photo was uploaded to Google Photos, where it was flagged as being potentially abusive material by a machine learning algorithm. 

Google ended up suspending and permanently deleting his Gmail account and his Google Fi phone and flagging his account to law enforcement. 

Just imagine how you might deal with losing both your primary email account, your phone number, and your authenticator app. 

Finding and reporting abuse is critical. But, as the article illustrates, ML-based approaches often lack context. A photo shared with a medical professional may share similar features to those showing abuse. 

Before we start devolving more and more of our day-to-day lives and decisions to machine learning-based algorithms, we may want to consider the consequences of removing humans from the loop.

The WhatsApp acquisition

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The water-cooler was abuzz this morning with news of Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp, a tiny company. With the claimed 400 million users that WhatsApp brings to Facebook, the numbers involve value each user at $40. That is an astonishing amount of money for a service that is monetised through application sales, not via advertisement. There have been a number of articles and blog posts online analysing this deal. This is not one of them..

My colleagues are a quiet and taciturn lot. Office banter is limited to a “Good Morning” and a “See you later..” outside of the lunch hour. For the first time, in my admittedly short stint here, we had a bonafide conversation that was not even tangentially related to trading systems and market data feeds. We got talking about what it means to be a programmer working outside of the startup / silicon valley scene. One of my colleagues remarked that he spent half a decade in further education and a lot longer learning the ropes until he got to the point now where he is comfortable and financially secure. He wondered if that time would have been better spent writing a new chat or social network. Perhaps a new way of optimising the transmission and sharing of ribald jokes, or for improving the sexting workflow.

We carried on in a similar vein for a while when the most introverted of our lot spoke up. He said: “I was just never interested. The thought of building the next Facebook or Twitter just doesn’t excite me. It was never something that was on my radar.”

I spend way too much time on Hacker News. The Silicon Valley culture and eco-system fascinates me, but it does not inspire me. I marvel at the numbers that are thrown around. A few billion here, a few billion there, but I also wonder about the utility of it all. It is now fashionable to talk about how much of a talent drain banking has become. How so many people left promising careers in academia and engineering to cut code and make money on Wall Street and the City. In a few years I can see people talking in similar terms about Silicon Valley. “He was a promising scientist, but he joined Google to help them optimise the placement of adverts on search results.”

I find the earnest tone of discussions on Hacker News and of the job postings for these start ups deeply ironic. They talk about changing the world, wanting rockstars and working on cool new technologies. Yet, the end goal is a big payout via IPO or acquisition having built a better way of sharing food selfies. I think these headline acquisitions are a honey trap for programmers. Somebody, like my colleague, who wouldn’t really even think about working for a startup building a “trivial” app might realise that the App may be a gateway to that long dreamt of retirement on the beach.. You might get a lot more people ready to work for peanuts with the hope of striking it rich one day. Perhaps it is not a colossal waste of money after all..

Working Effectively In Multi-Cultural Teams: Email and Teleconferences

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I was born in India but moved to The Netherlands to finish high school. I went to University in England and have worked in London and Tokyo since then. I have spent probably more time than most in a state of cultural confusion. Since starting my career, I have worked with teams in India, The USA, England and now in Tokyo.

I have noticed over and over again that communication can fall apart at the boundaries of different cultures. A team that is very productive locally may not scale across different regions and cultures.

In 2010, I was transferred to Tokyo from the London. When I first moved to Tokyo, I assumed my role would be strictly technical. I did not expect my work to be much different to what I did in London. I was wrong. Over the last couple of years, my role has turned into that of a translator, a mediator and a cultural interpreter (for want of a better word).

I want to share some of the things I have learnt in my time here. This entry focuses on Email and Teleconferences.

Email

Our world runs on email. From scheduling meetings, to status updates or to “sharing information”. Email is easy to use and easier to abuse. Poorly written emails can result in anxiety, confusion and misunderstanding.

When writing an email most people err on the side of verbosity. My Japanese colleagues often are perplexed when faced with an email that is a large block of unformatted text. I believe there is the strong correlation between the length of an email and the likelihood that people will read and respond to it.

There are ways to make email more effective:

  • Structure the email for clarity. Use paragraphs, bullet points and clear section headers to make the email look less dense
  • Focus on the intended recipients and those who need to take action based on the contents of your email
  • Do not use a single email to cover multiple topics. Send an email per topic and only send the email to the relevant people
  • Address recipients (people or teams) directly in the email. It is much more effective to say: “Hi Alice, Bob, Charlie” or “Hi Source Control Team” instead of starting the email with a “Hi all”

Finally, if you find yourself writing a long email it may be easier just to put the contents of your email in an appropriately formatted document and send the document. If action is required, arrange a meeting or a teleconference to go through the document with your colleagues.

It is much easier to ignore a long email than to ignore a meeting. Sending the document as part of the agenda of the meeting will ensure that your colleagues will have the document in front of them while you talk them through it.

Teleconferences

I do not know of a single person who enjoys teleconferences. They can be boring and can be a most effective time and productivity disposal system. Things become more complicated when not everyone can speak English (or the dominant / common language of your workplace).

I try and avoid teleconferences as much as possible, but there are ways to make them work:

  • Have a clear agenda, focused and realistic agenda. Having an unfocused agenda is the death knell for productivity! Enforcing a strict time limit to the meeting will also help focus minds on the agenda.
  • Send any materials, documents, diagrams ahead of the meeting. If possible, attach them to the meeting invite. It gives time to invitees to read and prepare any questions ahead of the meeting.
  • Do not read through documents or presentation in the meeting. Use the meeting to discuss the material, not to read it out loud.
  • Prepare actionable items for those people who you have invited to the meeting. If you cannot think of one, the person should be strictly an “optional attendee”.
  • Avoid slang, cultural references, and inside jokes. It can be very disconcerting for a team member not to know what everybody else is laughing about. Stick to the agenda, and use basic and direct language.

I have found that having a video meeting can be more effective than having a teleconference. It makes it difficult for the attendees to tune out the teleconference and check their email. As the facilitator, you get immediate feedback if your message is getting through.

Finally, treat meetings or teleconferences as matters of last resort. They are expensive and are an inconvenience especially if your team works in different timezones.

Propaganda in the age of Wikileaks

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Gloria Origgi, in Edge 335 states that we are leaving the information age behind and are entering a reputation age. She posits that one of the reasons for the influence Wikileaks wields in current political and social discourse is due to powerful, and reputed media organisations like the New York Times and The Guardian acting as conduits for it’s revelations.  We trust the contents of the Wikileaks secrets because of our implicit trust of these formidable media organisations.  We believe the revelations because we believe in the integrity of the Guardian or the Times.

When a reputed newspaper breaks a story, we assume that the sources have been vetted, and that the editors have double checked the allegations / revelations before publishing them.  Wikileaks, however, presents an interesting dilemma.  The contents of the leaks were uploaded by someone (presumably PFC Bradley Manning) within the US military establishment.   The behaviour of the US government (and other governments) subsequently offer some reassurance that these diplomatic cables did come from within their organisations.  Not surprisingly, “Cablegate” has become perhaps the media event of the year (or even the decade).  Hordes of commentators have descended on the Guardian website venting their spleen about the evils of the US government, and the hypocrisy of US foreign policy.

I can’t help but be a little cynical about this hoopla.  Yes, clearly some of the contents of leaks may jeopardise national (or indeed international) security.  However, I wonder how easy it would be for a government, or any other organisation to manipulate public opinion via a channel like Wikileaks.  Could Wikileaks itself be used as tool for government (or indeed corporate propaganda)?  Would it be easier for the US government to sell overt support of a South Korean invasion of North Korea given the cables published on the topic?  Would it be easier for the state department to withdraw a diplomat / intelligence agent from a tricky situation abroad now that he has been “outed” and him disappearing would look very bad for the host nation?

Yes, this is tinfoil hat territory.  I just want to convey that we should think twice before taking the contents of the Cablegate memos at face value.  Even if the leak was unintended (as it appears), it could be quite easy for a motivated organisation (government etc.) to move quickly and use it as another avenue for propaganda.

Meetings

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I wonder if there is a simple and straightforward formula which determines the value proposition of having a meeting at work.  Corporations love looking at the bottom line.  Cost saving measures abound in these economically straightened times.  Travel budgets are slashed, weary executives travel coach class and nights out on the company expense accounts usually stretch no further than a burger at TGI Fridays, if you are lucky.

It is depressing when you attend a meeting knowing fully that it is pointless.  It is doubly depressing when you know your fellow attendees probably feel the same way,  but nobody else wants to cancel the meeting.  I guess it depends on the corporate culture.  Here in Tokyo, decision making is basically building consensus, and meetings are all about sharing information.  What ends up happening is you have ten people sitting in a room and one person talking.  Out of the ten, maybe three would have some idea on what is going on.  Two will be asleep, and the rest would be nodding but with a glazed over look in their eyes.

So, is there a solution?  Maybe have Outlook or Notes or your meeting organizer somehow hookup to the HR database and come up with how much the meeting is costing the company?  If you have ten people, each costing say $50 an hour to employ, an hour long meeting is going to cost $500.  Is it worth the expense?  Would it be better to get everybody out of the office and to a bar or a restaurant for a meal (probably costing around $500 – TGIFridays!).  Maybe people can have a bit of fun, and relax and get something done as opposed to just sitting around slowly sinking into a dazed sort of stupor.

Echo Chamber

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Does anybody even remember the term “Information Superhighway” any more?  Do you remember a pre-global warming, pre-divorce, skinny Al Gore and his dubious claims on inventing the Internet?  We were told about having the world’s knowledge at our finger tips. The Internet would free information and provide the most egalitarian way to get to knowledge previously limited to inhabitants of ivory towers.  But what happened?  The story of the last ten years unfolds almost like a moralistic tale. Like Midas and his golden touch or like the Genie from Arabian nights and their granting of life wishes that destroy lives.

We don’t learn any more.  We bookmark.  We don’t read any more, we skim.  We don’t discuss any more, we forward links to points, and another set of links to counter points, followed by links for the conclusion.  When we do decide to comment, it is a comment made in character, stereotypical.

We all live in an echo chamber of our stereotype.  Our voices bounce off the walls, and are magnified by those of our peers, also of our stereotype.  These voices then pour out of the mouth of the chamber and as an atonal roar that clashes with those coming out of other chambers.  We are here, shouting at one another, but not bothering to understand why or what we are shouting for.  We like shouting because it is what we do, our slogans are what define us.