08.02 Second Reading Assignment

Assignment Deliverables

1. Upload a typed response to your analysis of the readings as a .pdf or .docx
   • Label the file YYYY-MM-DD Lastname Firstname Excavating AI Readings.(.pdf, .docx)

Requirements

1. Put your name and the date in the top left corner of the document.
2. Include the title, author, and date of publication of both readings.
3. Include the following:
   • 3 questions you have about each reading.
   • 3 contemporaneous cultural events / happenings / occurrences from the year of publication of the readings.
   • 3 contemporaneous political events / historical events /social movements from the year of publication of the readings.
   • A glossary with definitions of words from the readings you did not know the meaning of.
   • Tip: Contemporaneous means the same calendar year as the reading’s publication so for Reading #1 its 2019 and for Reading #2 its 2020.

Excavating AI - Reading #1

In Excavating AI   Kate Crawford and Trevor Paglen argue that image-training datasets encode social and political assumptions through their taxonomies and labels—especially when classifying people—resulting in derogatory, biased, and harmful categories and argue for auditing and rethinking datasets and their classification schemes so they are not treated as neutral fact but as a constructed choice with ethical consequences.

Kate Crawford and Trevor Paglen, “Excavating AI: The Politics of Training Sets for Machine Learning (September 19, 2019) https://excavating.ai  

Excavating “Excavating AI”: The Elephant in the Gallery - Reading #2

The paper Excavating “Excavating AI”: The Elephant in the Gallery   argues that Kate Crawford’s and Trevor Paglen’s work contains flaws, including, “a self-contradictory stance regarding informed consent for the use of facial images, as well as serious flaws in their critique of ML training sets.” Michael Lyons wrote the paper and was a co-author, with his colleagues Miyuki Kamachi and Jiro Gyoba, of the Japanese Female Facial Expression (JAFFE) Dataset   discussed and exhibited by Kate Crawford and Trevor Paglen.

Lyons, Michael J. Excavating “Excavating AI”: The Elephant in the Gallery   . ArXiv   , September 14, 2020. PDF  

Process

1. Read each text once without worrying about parts you don’t fully understand. Jot down anything that seems interesting or unusual.
2. Mark passages you agree or disagree with in both papers and note why. This is especially important when the texts take opposing positions.
3. True understanding often takes more than one pass. Use a second reading to refine your notes, form your own opinions, and evaluate the authors’ claims.

The main goal of this assignment is to engage in critical analysis of two texts and develop well-formed thoughts that you can clearly communicate to others.

How you reach that point is up to you: you can read thoroughly, take notes according to the assignment guidelines, or even consult large language models (LLMs) for prompts and ideas. However, using external tools can be both helpful and distracting, so use them wisely.

Your ability to form, retain, and express original insights is more valuable than the notes or the written response itself. Treat reading, note-taking, and any tools as means to arrive to class prepared to share novel, clear ideas and to participate effectively in group discussion, where you’ll be evaluated on the originality and clarity of your contributions.

Grading Rubric