Author: achour.5

‘Natives’ Text Review

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‘Natives’ is a short film about a couple, Anita and Rachel, who go visit Anita’s parents, in an Indian reservation. Anita does not have a strong relationship with her parents and is not open about her homosexuality with them. During their drive to Anita’s parents’ house, Rachel, who is not Native American, behaves very enthusiastically, knowing that she is going to meet Anita’s parents. They arrive and Rachel continues to be enthusiastic, expressing how beautiful she thought the area was and happens to watch the same TV series as Anita’s mother. As they go on with their stay, Anita remains indifferent. While they have dinner together, Anita’s father informs them about a voting event in their area. Rachel responds to him, and he asks her how she heard about it, which was through NPR. He chuckles after she tells him NPR, and Rachel is left confused. Rachel also confuses their post meal grace saying with the word “Yahweh” and begins to think that there could be a resemblance between Jews and Native Americans. Rachel is very eager make Anita’s parents aware of her relationship with Anita. Before they go out for a walk, Rachel finds a fascinating headband with a Native American design in their house, and wears it without asking. Later, Rachel walks into the kitchen and complements the smell of the food Anita’s mother is cooking. She again expresses her interest in Native American culture and wants to ask questions. She asks them if they’ve heard of the concept of two spirit, and that someone could be in between a man and a woman. Anita’s mother says shes heard of it, but this is does not exist in their tribe. Rachel is hurt and loses hope. She finds Anita outside and Anita confronts her and asks her if she would’ve ever dated her if she wasn’t Indian. They decide to go back to NYC and before they leave, Rachel wants to give back the headband but Anita’s mother says she can keep it. Rachel says she can’t, and Anita’s mother tells her its from Walmart. Rachel and Anita head back to NYC, along with the headband. https://www.filmdoo.com/films/natives/

 

Bias In The Development of AI (Diary of Systemic Injustice)

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Britannica defines AI as “artificial intelligence (AI), the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings.” AI is being implemented into countless technology platforms currently, making functions easier and faster. AI systems are designed to use data to perform tasks and make decisions. But some of the uses of AI, like face recognition, is very susceptible to discrimination.

Joy Buolamwini, a computer scientist of Ghanaian descent, founded the Algorithmic Justice League to combat discriminatory outcomes of AI systems used today. In her TIME article ‘Artificial Intelligence Has a Problem With Gender and Racial Bias. Here’s How to Solve It’, she states that face recognition AI systems are not tested enough on people that are not men or light skinned. Three photos below demonstrate the kinds of misinterpretation AI systems make when attempting to recognize Black women, and the company that developed that system is shown beneath the photos. It falsely identifies them as male, and recognizes an afro as a wig. However, those systems performed terrifically for light skinned men with an error rate of only 1%. On the contrary, for dark skinned women, the error rate skyrocketed to 35%.
 

 

What makes this problematic is that these AI systems are used for a wide range of functions like face recognition for surveillance, forensics, algorithms for advertisements, medical data, etc. If a system cannot differentiate accurately between dark skinned persons, or misidentify them individually, dark skinned people are at risk of being targeted. A surveillance system may recognize a dark skinned person as a threat. Forensic science methods with AI may not be able to distinguish minorities precisely, targeting the wrong people. There have even been recent complaints about social media algorithms, favoring influencers that are not dark skinned. These issues are due to the fact that most people in the tech industry are White males, and are not taking into account that these systems will impact people differently.

Joy Buolamwini founded the Algorithmic Justice League to dig deeper into these issues and prevent gender and racial bias in AI systems. This surely can be solved by improving those systems to be inclusive and not biased. Buolamwini believes that facial recognition systems used by law enforcement, should be temporarily suspended, until these systems have been completely improved. Another way this can be solved is by encouraging women and minorities to join the STEM field and be a part of the development of these new technologies.

britannica.com/technology/artificial-intelligence

time.com/5520558/artificial-intelligence-racial-gender-bias/

youtube.com/watch?v=UG_X_7g63rY

Struggles Faced By Immigrants In Lisa Ko’s ‘The Leavers’ (Week 11 Context Presentation)

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‘The Leavers’, published in 2017 by Lisa Ko, a woman born in New York City to immigrants from China, reveals the difficulties immigrants go through. She was inspired by a news article about an undocumented immigrant that was arrested and separated from her son, who was adopted by Canadian parents.

In an article from Forbes by immigration lawyer Andy Semotiuk, he says that American identity is shaped by immigrants. Also, individual identity is shaped by American Culture because immigrants want to belong and fit in. Barack Obama for example, went by Barry Obama while he was growing up, but later in life, he embraced his real name and wanted to go by Barack.

In ‘The Leavers’, Deming is an undocumented child, born in NYC, raised by his mother. His mother disappears one day, leaving Deming very angry at her, but does not know why she left him. Polly, his mother, turns out to have been arrested and deported. Deming is then adopted by a White couple and becomes ‘Daniel Wilkinson.’ This couple attempts to ‘save’ Deming by helping him become more ‘American’ but always felt differentiated. He later tracks down his mother in China, visits her and return to America. She is a very adventurous, hard working woman, but spends her life regretting going to America and giving birth to her son there.

In the US, children separated from their aunts grandparents, or someone that isn’t their mother or father are placed in foster care by the HHS until they can be released by their parent or legal guardian. “About 11,900 children were in HHS shelters and nearly 5,800 children were in border patrol custody as of March 28” according to an article from Reuters. The immigration laws are too negligent of immigrants and the consequences are disdained. The affects of abandonment on a child are very severe and lead to many health problems like depression and addiction. ‘The Leavers’ gives insight into the “behind the scenes” of a family separation.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/review/lisa-ko-immigration-inspiration-leavers

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andyjsemotiuk/2021/01/31/what-is-the-american-identity-and-how-should-immigrants-be-absorbed/?sh=5c40595e5e87

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-separations-idUSKBN2BM149