Bringing the People Back In: Contesting Benchmark Machine Learning Datasets

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Denton, Remi, Hanna, Alex, Amironesei, Razvan, Smart, Andrew, Nicole, Hilary, Scheuerman, Morgan Klaus
Format: Preprint
Published: 2020
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author Denton, Remi
Hanna, Alex
Amironesei, Razvan
Smart, Andrew
Nicole, Hilary
Scheuerman, Morgan Klaus
author_facet Denton, Remi
Hanna, Alex
Amironesei, Razvan
Smart, Andrew
Nicole, Hilary
Scheuerman, Morgan Klaus
contents In response to algorithmic unfairness embedded in sociotechnical systems, significant attention has been focused on the contents of machine learning datasets which have revealed biases towards white, cisgender, male, and Western data subjects. In contrast, comparatively less attention has been paid to the histories, values, and norms embedded in such datasets. In this work, we outline a research program - a genealogy of machine learning data - for investigating how and why these datasets have been created, what and whose values influence the choices of data to collect, the contextual and contingent conditions of their creation. We describe the ways in which benchmark datasets in machine learning operate as infrastructure and pose four research questions for these datasets. This interrogation forces us to "bring the people back in" by aiding us in understanding the labor embedded in dataset construction, and thereby presenting new avenues of contestation for other researchers encountering the data.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2007_07399
institution arXiv
publishDate 2020
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bringing the People Back In: Contesting Benchmark Machine Learning Datasets
Denton, Remi
Hanna, Alex
Amironesei, Razvan
Smart, Andrew
Nicole, Hilary
Scheuerman, Morgan Klaus
Computers and Society
In response to algorithmic unfairness embedded in sociotechnical systems, significant attention has been focused on the contents of machine learning datasets which have revealed biases towards white, cisgender, male, and Western data subjects. In contrast, comparatively less attention has been paid to the histories, values, and norms embedded in such datasets. In this work, we outline a research program - a genealogy of machine learning data - for investigating how and why these datasets have been created, what and whose values influence the choices of data to collect, the contextual and contingent conditions of their creation. We describe the ways in which benchmark datasets in machine learning operate as infrastructure and pose four research questions for these datasets. This interrogation forces us to "bring the people back in" by aiding us in understanding the labor embedded in dataset construction, and thereby presenting new avenues of contestation for other researchers encountering the data.
title Bringing the People Back In: Contesting Benchmark Machine Learning Datasets
topic Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.07399