Algorithmic Bias and the Unintentional Discrimination in the Results
October 21, 2015
The article titled When Big Data Becomes Bad Data on Tech In America discusses the legal ramifications of relying on algorithms for companies. The “disparate impact” theory has been used in the courtroom for some time to ensure that discriminatory policies be struck down whether they were created with the intention to discriminate or not. Algorithmic bias occurs all the time, and according to the spirit of the law, it discriminates although unintentionally. The article states,
“It’s troubling enough when Flickr’s auto-tagging of online photos label pictures of black men as “animal” or “ape,” or when researchers determine that Google search results for black-sounding names are more likely to be accompanied by ads about criminal activity than search results for white-sounding names. But what about when big data is used to determine a person’s credit score, ability to get hired, or even the length of a prison sentence?”
The article also reminds us that data can often be a reflection of “historical or institutional discrimination.” The only thing that matters is whether the results are biased. This is where the question of human bias becomes irrelevant. There are legal scholars and researchers arguing on behalf of ethical machine learning design that roots out algorithmic bias. Stronger regulations and better oversight of the algorithms themselves might be the only way to prevent time in court.
Chelsea Kerwin, October 21, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Vodafone Improves Search Management
October 20, 2015
More than 8,000 call center agents use Vodafone’s internal knowledge management platform dubbed AskVodafone to access client information. AskVodafone’s old system was not performing as well as it used, so the company decided to upgrade to Exorbyte. Motor Traffic runs down Vodafone’s upgrade process in the article, “Exorbyte Matchmaker Managed Over 2 million Searches A Month On The Platform AskVodafone.”
Vodafone wanted to shorten an agent’s processing time on phone calls. The solution required faceted search, keyword suggestions, more accurate search results, and information related to a caller’s issue. Exorbyte created an individualized solution for Vodafone and they were given the job:
“Through the experience with the Exorbyte solutions and, of course, the existing site license used in the company the contract has been awarded directly to Exorbyte. These Andreas Vieth, Product Manager Search: ‘Due to the long and successful collaboration with Exorbyte it was logical for us to continue with them in the modernization of AskVodafone portal and to develop synergies between these and the Exorbyte search on the Vodafone website.’”
The solution indexes over 25,000 Web sites and it has increased the center’s data quality and results relevancy. The end result is that over 8,000 calls and 50,000 searches performed on AskVodafone are resolved faster and with better information.
Whitney Grace, October 20, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Coveo Touts Secure, Intelligent Cloud Search
October 19, 2015
Security is a perpetual concern, especially for those who work in the cloud. Enterprise search firm Coveo want us to know they take security very seriously. Their press release, “Coveo Completes Security Evaluation for cloud-Based Intelligent Search Offerings,” is posted at MarketWatch. The question is, “What does secure mean?” The definition may depend on one’s knowledge of the exploit world.
The write-up states:
“Marking its commitment to be the most secure intelligent search provider in the marketplace, Coveo announced that it has completed a comprehensive evaluation of data security and compliance procedures and processes. Coveo engaged with Brightline CPAs & Associates, which conducted a series of tests to evaluate the effectiveness of operations and controls that address data integrity and security. With data security threats on the rise across various industries and around the world, Coveo recognizes how important it is to provide clients of its cloud, intelligent search offerings with the highest security standards. Over the years, Coveo has implemented a set of industry-standard operations, infrastructure and services to ensure the integrity and privacy of customer data, including:
— SOC II and SOC I examinations
— Strong logical and physical access controls
— Systematic application and source code scanning
— Comprehensive background checks on all employees
— 24/7/365 live, dedicated operations and security teams
— Formal, ongoing 3rd party compliance and security reviews”
We are reminded that Coveo was recently named “most innovative leader” for the second year running in the Gartner Enterprise Search Magic Quadrant, with that report lauding the company’s “unusually rich security functions.” Founded in 2005, Coveo maintains offices in the U.S. (SanMateo, CA), the Netherlands, and Quebec.
Cynthia Murrell, October 19, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Add a Modicum or More of Value to Your Facebook Time with Detox
October 15, 2015
The article on Life Hacker titled Detox For Facebook Replaces Your Feed with Actual News begs the question: why search when you can graze like a millennial info ruminant? The idea of Detox is that Facebook wastes time. It is difficult to argue with that, especially as someone who has, on more than one occasion, closed a tab opened to Facebook only to be confronted with another tab, also open to Facebook, and perhaps even another. It is this mindless arena of continuous distraction. The article says,
“If you can relate, consider Detox: it replaces your Facebook feed with an actual news feed.
The browser extension is from previously mentioned news feed Panda. You simply download the extension, turn it on via Facebook, and it will replace your feed with content from sites available at Panda: Product Hunt, Hacker News, and Designer News to name a few. You can also use Detox’s “Auto Activation” and schedule specific days and times you want the extension to work.”
Perhaps you are someone immune to the onslaught of trite and meaningless status updates. But most of us are coping with a level of addiction that we really have no means of overcoming unless we “gasp” sign off entirely. If you aren’t quite ready for that, but hope to make your Facebook feed at least somewhat worth your perusal, this might be a nice compromise.
Chelsea Kerwin, October 15, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Mobile Search Is Not Objective: Is This a Surprise?
October 14, 2015
Running a query in a walled garden returns the flowers and trees in the walled garden. Maybe the garden owner has installed Chinese style pots with flowers from other gardens. Make no mistake. The garden is owned by a person who has an idea, however muddled, about what grows and what goes.
I thought about gardening when I read “Mobile Is Not a Neutral Platform.” The word “neutral” is an interesting one. Math is neutral. A numerical recipe is not necessarily neutral. Weeds growing in the median of I 95 may be neutral or at least hardy. Decisions about what orchids to put in a Nero Wolfe novel is not neutral.
The write up, in my view, shows a bit of wonderment with regard to what happens when the iPhone uses various Apple services or what the intent is when the Alphabet Google thing snags a user in its ecosystem. Think about the pitcher plant. Same idea, prey trapping.
The write up included this passage which I highlighted in Venus flytrap green:
Apple and Google keep making decisions, enabling or disabling options and capabilities and creating or removing opportunities.
I noted this comment as well:
But the deeper issue is that we haven’t just unbundled search from the web into apps – we’re now unbundling apps, search and discovery into the OS itself. Google of course has always put a web search box on the Android home screen (and indeed one could ask why there needs to be an actual browser icon as well) but this is much more fundamental.
Forget neutral. Forget objectivity. The online world has rolled back into the walled garden model. The issue, gentle reader, is control and money. That neutrality and objectivity yammer is, in my opinion, irrelevant. You want information unbiased and unfettered? You will have to work hard for that type of information. How will this go over with the online consuming folks?
Answer: About as well as expecting every visitor to the garden to read the information about Utricularia on a small plastic tag tossed amongs the bladderworts tended by Apple, Facebook, Google, et al.
And search? You may not know what you are missing, gentle reader. If a company is not on an Apple or Google map, does that company exist?
Stephen E Arnold, October 14, 2015
Microsoft: Yandex Looking Better than Bing
October 13, 2015
I read “Russia’s Yandex Teams Up with Microsoft for Windows 10.” Microsoft has its work cut out in the search and retrieval sector. The Fast Search & Transfer deal for $1.2 billion, the Powerset technology, the infusion of wizards from Australia, and the wild and crazy promotion for Bing—much activity, questionable payoff.
According to the write up:
Russia’s biggest search engine Yandex said on Tuesday Microsoft would offer it as the default homepage and search tool for Internet browsers across its Windows 10 platform in Russia and several other countries.
I understand the Yandex does a better, no, make that, a much better job indexing content than Bing. In my lectures for professionals engaged in law enforcement and intelligence activities, I show comparisons of output from Bing next to outputs from Yandex. Less Dancing with the Stars and more substance is one way I point up the difference between consumery Bing and Yandex.
According to the write up Microsoft and Yandex have a “strategic cooperation agreement.”
Several observations:
- Microsoft has talked about search for many years. Its products and services are okay. Outfits like Yandex offer results that are more useful for the types of queries I run. Yandex has been around since 2008. Microsoft leaps into action.
- Microsoft’s Bing search has evolved along a trajectory I did not foresee. The colors, the pop culture feel, the intrusiveness of Cortana, and the exclusion of content from Microsoft research baffle me.
- I use Google to locate information about Microsoft’s products and services. That, to me, points to some fundamental problems with Bing.
Net net: Microsoft and search remain and unhappy couple. One question: Will the Microsoft food service people add solyanka to the menu?
Stephen E Arnold, October 13, 2015
Sell Your Soul for a next to Nothing on the Dark Web
October 13, 2015
The article on ZDNet titled The Price of Your Identity in the Dark Web? No More Than a Dollar provides the startlingly cheap value of stolen data on the Dark Web. We have gotten used to hearing about data breaches at companies that we know and use (ahem, Ashley Madison), but what happens next? The article explains,
“Burrowing into the Dark Web — a small area of the Deep Web which is not accessible unless via the Tor Onion network — stolen data for sale is easy to find. Accounts belonging to US mobile operators can be purchased for as little as $14 each, while compromised eBay, PayPal, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon and Uber accounts are also for sale. PayPal and eBay accounts which have a few months or years of transaction history can be sold for up to $300 each.”
According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse the most common industries affected by data breaches are healthcare, government, retail, and education sectors. But it also stresses that a high number of data breaches are not caused by hackers or malicious persons at all. Instead, unintended disclosure is often the culprit. Dishearteningly, there is really no way to escape being a target besides living out some Ron Swanson off the grid fantasy scenario. Every organization that collects personal information is a potential breach target. It is up to the organizations to protect the information, and while many are making that a top priority, most have a long way to go.
Chelsea Kerwin, October 13, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Artificial Intelligence: A Jargon Mandala to Understand the Universe of Search
October 12, 2015
I read “Lux: Useful Sankey Diagram on AI.” A Sankey diagram, according to Sankey Diagrams a “Sankey diagram says more than 1,000 pie charts.” The assumption is, of course, that a pie chart presents meaningful data. In the energy sector you can visual flows in complex systems. It helps to have numbers when one is working towards a Sankey map, but if real data are not close at hand, one can fudge up some data.
Here’s the Sankey diagram in the write up:
You can see an almost legible version at this link.
What the diagram suggests is that certain information access and content processing functions flow into data mining, machine learning, and statistics. If you are a fan of multidimensionality, the arrow of time may flow in the reverse direction; that is from data mining, machine learning, and statistics to affective computing, cognitive computing, computational discovery, image and video analytics, language translation, navigation, recommender systems, and speech recognition.
The intermediary state, tinted a US currency green provides intermediating operations or conditions; for example, anomaly detection, collaborative filtering, computer eavesdropping, computer vision, pattern recognition, NLP, path planning, clustering, deep learning, dimensionality reduction, networks graphic models, online reinforcement learning, pattern similarity, probabilistic modeling, regression, and, my favorite, search algorithms.
The diagram, like the wild and crazy chemical imagery for Watson, seems to be a way to:
- Collect a number of discrete operations
- Arrange the operations into some orderly framework
- Allow the viewer to perceive relationships or the potential for relationships among the operations.
In short, skip the wild and crazy presentations by search and content processing vendors about how search enables broader and, hence, more valuable activities. Search is relegated to an entry in the intermediating column of the Sankey diagram.
My thought is that some folks will definitely love the idea that the many different specialties of content processing can be presented in a mandala which invites contemplation and consideration.
The diagram makes clear that when a company wants to know what one can do with the different and often clever operatio0ns one can perform with content, the answer may be, “Make a poster and hang it on the wall.”
In terms of applications, the chart makes quite explicit that some clever team will have to put the parts in order. Does this remind you of building a Star Wars character from Lego blocks.
The construct is the value, not the individual enabling blocks.
Stephen E Arnold, October 12, 2015
Web Site Search Goes Camping
October 12, 2015
It is a common fact that if you are a major retailer and your Web site’s search function is horrible, you are losing millions of dollars in sales. Cabela’s is the world’s largest marketer of hunting, fishing, camping, and other outdoor merchandise decided to upgrade their Web site with GroupBy says PR Newswire in the press release, “Cabela’s And GroupBy Partner To Improve Site Search.”
With GroupBy’s advice, Cabela’s has made a good choice:
“After careful evaluation, Cabela’s selected Searchandiser to replace their Oracle Endeca site search, as they required a robust solution that would deliver accurate search results and an improved user experience for their customers. ‘At Cabela’s we strive to continually improve our customer experience and search relevance is an opportunity area we have identified,’ said Scott Johnstone, Cabela’s Technology Partner Relationship Manager. ‘To that end, we are partnering with GroupBy Inc. to leverage their merchandising tools, search expertise and the underlying technology.’”
As Cabela’s market expands, with Searchandiser creates a better online shopping experience for users with more secure transactions. Any outdoor enthusiast with tell you that equipment is vital for a good adventure. As more people are heading outside to experience the great outdoors, they rely on a decent Web site to order their supplies and gear. Cabela’s is set to meet the new surge with better searching functionalities.
Whitney Grace, October 12, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Privacy Centric Hulbee Secures $9 Million
October 10, 2015
You can search the Web and, in theory, not be tracked. Navigate to Hulbee and enter your query. You may want to do some exploratory clicking to figure out how Hulbee is helping you find the information you want. You can set your default search engine if you use the Alphabet Google Chrome beastie.
According to “Hulbee Bags $9M To Grow Its Pro-Privacy Search Engine,” the system is a Swiss based semantic search company. The write up points out:
It also has its own ad system, rather than bolting on a third party ad network. And again here it’s taking a non-tracking approach. Ads on Hulbee are targeted based on the search query, according to CEO Andreas Wiebe, so there’s no geotargeting or cumulative tracking. (Although users can specify their region in order to ensure more relevant search results, so it may have basic country data. And once you step off Hulbee and onto whatever website you were trying to find chances are their ad networks will start tracking you, unless you’re running an ad blocker…)
Yep, privacy is job one for advertising. Take a moment to explore this system. You may want to compare its output to that of Ixquick and Unbubble, two other privacy oriented outfits.
Stephen E Arnold, October 10, 2015
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