Tag Archives: machine learning algorithms

Youthful Canadian inventors win awards

Two teenagers stand next two each other displaying their inventions. One holds a laptop, while the other holds a wireless headset.
Vinny Gu, left, and Anush Mutyala, right, hope to continue to work to improve their inventions. (Niza Lyapa Nondo/CBC)

This November 28, 2023 article by Philip Drost for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) The Current radio programme highl8ights two youthful inventors, Note: Links have been removed,

Anush Mutyala [emphasis mine] may only be in Grade 12, but he already has hopes that his innovations and inventions will rival that of Elon Musk.

“I always tell my friends something that would be funny is if I’m competing head-to-head with Elon Musk in the race to getting people [neural] implants,” Mutyala told Matt Galloway on The Current

Mutyala, a student at Chinguacousy Secondary School in Brampton, Ont., created a brain imaging system that he says opens the future for permanent wireless neural implants. 

For his work, he received an award from Youth Science Canada at the National Fair in 2023, which highlights young people pushing innovation. 

Mutyala wanted to create a way for neural implants to last longer. Implants can help people hear better, or move parts of the body they otherwise couldn’t, but neural implants in particular face issues with regard to power consumption, and traditionally must be replaced by surgery after their batteries die. That can be every five years. 

But Mutyala thinks his system, Enerspike, can change that. The algorithm he designed lowers the energy consumption needed for implants to process and translate brain signals into making a limb move.

“You would essentially never need to replace wireless implants again for the purpose of battery replacement,” said Mutyala. 

Mutyala was inspired by Stephen Hawking, who famously spoke with the use of a speech synthesizer.

“What if we used technology like this and we were able to restore his complete communication ability? He would have been able to communicate at a much faster rate and he would have had a much greater impact on society,” said Mutyala. 

… Mutyala isn’t the only innovator. Vinny Gu [emphasis mine], a Grade 11 student at Markville Secondary School in Markham, Ont., also received an award for creating DermaScan, an online application that can look at a photo and predict whether the person photographed has skin cancer or not.

“There has [sic] been some attempts at this problem in the past. However, they usually result in very low accuracy. However, I incorporated a technology to help my model better detect the minor small details in the image in order for it to get a better prediction,” said Gu. 

He says it doesn’t replace visiting a dermatologist — but it can give people an option to do pre-screenings with ease, which can help them decide if they need to go see a dermatologist. He says his model is 90-per-cent accurate. 

He is currently testing Dermascan, and he hopes to one day make it available for free to anyone who needs it. 

Drost’s November 28, 2023 article hosts an embedded audio file of the radio interview and more.

You can find out about Anoush Mutyala and his work on his LinkedIn profile (in a addition to being a high school student, since October 2023, he’s also a neuromorphics researcher at York University). If my link to his profile fails, search Mutyala’s name online and access his public page at the LinkedIn website. There’s something else, Mutyala has an eponymous website.

My online searches for more about Vinny (or Vincent) Gu were not successful.

You can find a bit more information about Mutyala’s Enerspike here and Gu’s DermaScan here. Youth Science Canada can be found here.

Not to forget, there’s grade nine student Arushi Nath and her work on planetary defence, which is being recognized in a number of ways. (See my November 17, 2023 posting, Arushi Nath gives the inside story about the 2023 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Awards and my November 23, 2023 posting, Margot Lee Shetterly [Hidden Figures author] in Toronto, Canada and a little more STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] information.) I must say November 2023 has been quite the banner month for youth science in Canada.

Use AI to reduce worries about nanoparticles in food

A June 16, 2021 news item on ScienceDaily announces research into the impact that engineered metallic nanoparticles used in agricultural practices have on food,

While crop yield has achieved a substantial boost from nanotechnology in recent years, alarms over the health risks posed by nanoparticles within fresh produce and grains have also increased. In particular, nanoparticles entering the soil through irrigation, fertilizers and other sources have raised concerns about whether plants absorb these minute particles enough to cause toxicity.

In a new study published online in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, researchers at Texas A&M University have used machine learning [a form of artificial intelligence {AI}] to evaluate the salient properties of metallic nanoparticles that make them more susceptible for plant uptake. The researchers said their algorithm could indicate how much plants accumulate nanoparticles in their roots and shoots.

A June 16, 2021 Texas A&M University news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, describes the research, which employed two different machine learning algorithms, in more detail,

Nanoparticles are a burgeoning trend in several fields, including medicine, consumer products and agriculture. Depending on the type of nanoparticle, some have favorable surface properties, charge and magnetism, among other features. These qualities make them ideal for a number of applications. For example, in agriculture, nanoparticles may be used as antimicrobials to protect plants from pathogens. Alternatively, they can be used to bind to fertilizers or insecticides and then programmed for slow release to increase plant absorption.

These agricultural practices and others, like irrigation, can cause nanoparticles to accumulate in the soil. However, with the different types of nanoparticles that could exist in the ground and a staggeringly large number of terrestrial plant species, including food crops, it is not clearly known if certain properties of nanoparticles make them more likely to be absorbed by some plant species than others.

“As you can imagine, if we have to test the presence of each nanoparticle for every plant species, it is a huge number of experiments, which is very time-consuming and expensive,” said Xingmao “Samuel” Ma, associate professor in the Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “To give you an idea, silver nanoparticles alone can have hundreds of different sizes, shapes and surface coatings, and so, experimentally testing each one, even for a single plant species, is impractical.”

Instead, for their study, the researchers chose two different machine learning algorithms, an artificial neural network and gene-expression programming. They first trained these algorithms on a database created from past research on different metallic nanoparticles and the specific plants in which they accumulated. In particular, their database contained the size, shape and other characteristics of different nanoparticles, along with information on how much of these particles were absorbed from soil or nutrient-enriched water into the plant body.

Once trained, their machine learning algorithms could correctly predict the likelihood of a given metallic nanoparticle to accumulate in a plant species. Also, their algorithms revealed that when plants are in a nutrient-enriched or hydroponic solution, the chemical makeup of the metallic nanoparticle determines the propensity of accumulation in the roots and shoots. But if plants are grown in soil, the contents of organic matter and the clay in soil are key to nanoparticle uptake.

Ma said that while the machine learning algorithms could make predictions for most food crops and terrestrial plants, they might not yet be ready for aquatic plants. He also noted that the next step in his research would be to investigate if the machine learning algorithms could predict nanoparticle uptake from leaves rather than through the roots.

“It is quite understandable that people are concerned about the presence of nanoparticles in their fruits, vegetables and grains,” said Ma. “But instead of not using nanotechnology altogether, we would like farmers to reap the many benefits provided by this technology but avoid the potential food safety concerns.”

This image accompanies the paper’s research abstract,

[downloaded frm https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.1c01603]

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Prediction of Plant Uptake and Translocation of Engineered Metallic Nanoparticles by Machine Learning by Xiaoxuan Wang, Liwei Liu, Weilan Zhang, and Xingmao Ma. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2021, 55, 11, 7491–7500 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.1c01603 Publication Date:May 17, 2021 Copyright © 2021 American Chemical Society

This paper is behind a paywall.

Governments need to tell us when and how they’re using AI (artificial intelligence) algorithms to make decisions

I have two items and an exploration of the Canadian scene all three of which feature governments, artificial intelligence, and responsibility.

Special issue of Information Polity edited by Dutch academics,

A December 14, 2020 IOS Press press release (also on EurekAlert) announces a special issue of Information Polity focused on algorithmic transparency in government,

Amsterdam, NL – The use of algorithms in government is transforming the way bureaucrats work and make decisions in different areas, such as healthcare or criminal justice. Experts address the transparency challenges of using algorithms in decision-making procedures at the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels in this special issue of Information Polity.

Machine-learning algorithms hold huge potential to make government services fairer and more effective and have the potential of “freeing” decision-making from human subjectivity, according to recent research. Algorithms are used in many public service contexts. For example, within the legal system it has been demonstrated that algorithms can predict recidivism better than criminal court judges. At the same time, critics highlight several dangers of algorithmic decision-making, such as racial bias and lack of transparency.

Some scholars have argued that the introduction of algorithms in decision-making procedures may cause profound shifts in the way bureaucrats make decisions and that algorithms may affect broader organizational routines and structures. This special issue on algorithm transparency presents six contributions to sharpen our conceptual and empirical understanding of the use of algorithms in government.

“There has been a surge in criticism towards the ‘black box’ of algorithmic decision-making in government,” explain Guest Editors Sarah Giest (Leiden University) and Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen (Utrecht University). “In this special issue collection, we show that it is not enough to unpack the technical details of algorithms, but also look at institutional, organizational, and individual context within which these algorithms operate to truly understand how we can achieve transparent and responsible algorithms in government. For example, regulations may enable transparency mechanisms, yet organizations create new policies on how algorithms should be used, and individual public servants create new professional repertoires. All these levels interact and affect algorithmic transparency in public organizations.”

The transparency challenges for the use of algorithms transcend different levels of government – from European level to individual public bureaucrats. These challenges can also take different forms; transparency can be enabled or limited by technical tools as well as regulatory guidelines or organizational policies. Articles in this issue address transparency challenges of algorithm use at the macro-, meso-, and micro-level. The macro level describes phenomena from an institutional perspective – which national systems, regulations and cultures play a role in algorithmic decision-making. The meso-level primarily pays attention to the organizational and team level, while the micro-level focuses on individual attributes, such as beliefs, motivation, interactions, and behaviors.

“Calls to ‘keep humans in the loop’ may be moot points if we fail to understand how algorithms impact human decision-making and how algorithmic design impacts the practical possibilities for transparency and human discretion,” notes Rik Peeters, research professor of Public Administration at the Centre for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE) in Mexico City. In a review of recent academic literature on the micro-level dynamics of algorithmic systems, he discusses three design variables that determine the preconditions for human transparency and discretion and identifies four main sources of variation in “human-algorithm interaction.”

The article draws two major conclusions: First, human agents are rarely fully “out of the loop,” and levels of oversight and override designed into algorithms should be understood as a continuum. The second pertains to bounded rationality, satisficing behavior, automation bias, and frontline coping mechanisms that play a crucial role in the way humans use algorithms in decision-making processes.

For future research Dr. Peeters suggests taking a closer look at the behavioral mechanisms in combination with identifying relevant skills of bureaucrats in dealing with algorithms. “Without a basic understanding of the algorithms that screen- and street-level bureaucrats have to work with, it is difficult to imagine how they can properly use their discretion and critically assess algorithmic procedures and outcomes. Professionals should have sufficient training to supervise the algorithms with which they are working.”

At the macro-level, algorithms can be an important tool for enabling institutional transparency, writes Alex Ingrams, PhD, Governance and Global Affairs, Institute of Public Administration, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands. This study evaluates a machine-learning approach to open public comments for policymaking to increase institutional transparency of public commenting in a law-making process in the United States. The article applies an unsupervised machine learning analysis of thousands of public comments submitted to the United States Transport Security Administration on a 2013 proposed regulation for the use of new full body imaging scanners in airports. The algorithm highlights salient topic clusters in the public comments that could help policymakers understand open public comments processes. “Algorithms should not only be subject to transparency but can also be used as tool for transparency in government decision-making,” comments Dr. Ingrams.

“Regulatory certainty in combination with organizational and managerial capacity will drive the way the technology is developed and used and what transparency mechanisms are in place for each step,” note the Guest Editors. “On its own these are larger issues to tackle in terms of developing and passing laws or providing training and guidance for public managers and bureaucrats. The fact that they are linked further complicates this process. Highlighting these linkages is a first step towards seeing the bigger picture of why transparency mechanisms are put in place in some scenarios and not in others and opens the door to comparative analyses for future research and new insights for policymakers. To advocate the responsible and transparent use of algorithms, future research should look into the interplay between micro-, meso-, and macro-level dynamics.”

“We are proud to present this special issue, the 100th issue of Information Polity. Its focus on the governance of AI demonstrates our continued desire to tackle contemporary issues in eGovernment and the importance of showcasing excellent research and the insights offered by information polity perspectives,” add Professor Albert Meijer (Utrecht University) and Professor William Webster (University of Stirling), Editors-in-Chief.

This image illustrates the interplay between the various level dynamics,

Caption: Studying algorithms and algorithmic transparency from multiple levels of analyses. Credit: Information Polity.

Here’s a link, to and a citation for the special issue,

Algorithmic Transparency in Government: Towards a Multi-Level Perspective
Guest Editors: Sarah Giest, PhD, and Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen, PhD
Information Polity, Volume 25, Issue 4 (December 2020), published by IOS Press

The issue is open access for three months, Dec. 14, 2020 – March 14, 2021.

Two articles from the special were featured in the press release,

“The agency of algorithms: Understanding human-algorithm interaction in administrative decision-making,” by Rik Peeters, PhD (https://doi.org/10.3233/IP-200253)

“A machine learning approach to open public comments for policymaking,” by Alex Ingrams, PhD (https://doi.org/10.3233/IP-200256)

An AI governance publication from the US’s Wilson Center

Within one week of the release of a special issue of Information Polity on AI and governments, a Wilson Center (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars) December 21, 2020 news release (received via email) announces a new publication,

Governing AI: Understanding the Limits, Possibilities, and Risks of AI in an Era of Intelligent Tools and Systems by John Zysman & Mark Nitzberg

Abstract

In debates about artificial intelligence (AI), imaginations often run wild. Policy-makers, opinion leaders, and the public tend to believe that AI is already an immensely powerful universal technology, limitless in its possibilities. However, while machine learning (ML), the principal computer science tool underlying today’s AI breakthroughs, is indeed powerful, ML is fundamentally a form of context-dependent statistical inference and as such has its limits. Specifically, because ML relies on correlations between inputs and outputs or emergent clustering in training data, today’s AI systems can only be applied in well- specified problem domains, still lacking the context sensitivity of a typical toddler or house-pet. Consequently, instead of constructing policies to govern artificial general intelligence (AGI), decision- makers should focus on the distinctive and powerful problems posed by narrow AI, including misconceived benefits and the distribution of benefits, autonomous weapons, and bias in algorithms. AI governance, at least for now, is about managing those who create and deploy AI systems, and supporting the safe and beneficial application of AI to narrow, well-defined problem domains. Specific implications of our discussion are as follows:

  • AI applications are part of a suite of intelligent tools and systems and must ultimately be regulated as a set. Digital platforms, for example, generate the pools of big data on which AI tools operate and hence, the regulation of digital platforms and big data is part of the challenge of governing AI. Many of the platform offerings are, in fact, deployments of AI tools. Hence, focusing on AI alone distorts the governance problem.
  • Simply declaring objectives—be they assuring digital privacy and transparency, or avoiding bias—is not sufficient. We must decide what the goals actually will be in operational terms.
  • The issues and choices will differ by sector. For example, the consequences of bias and error will differ from a medical domain or a criminal justice domain to one of retail sales.
  • The application of AI tools in public policy decision making, in transportation design or waste disposal or policing among a whole variety of domains, requires great care. There is a substantial risk of focusing on efficiency when the public debate about what the goals should be in the first place is in fact required. Indeed, public values evolve as part of social and political conflict.
  • The economic implications of AI applications are easily exaggerated. Should public investment concentrate on advancing basic research or on diffusing the tools, user interfaces, and training needed to implement them?
  • As difficult as it will be to decide on goals and a strategy to implement the goals of one community, let alone regional or international communities, any agreement that goes beyond simple objective statements is very unlikely.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to successfully download the working paper/report from the Wilson Center’s Governing AI: Understanding the Limits, Possibilities, and Risks of AI in an Era of Intelligent Tools and Systems webpage.

However, I have found a draft version of the report (Working Paper) published August 26, 2020 on the Social Science Research Network. This paper originated at the University of California at Berkeley as part of a series from the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy (BRIE). ‘Governing AI: Understanding the Limits, Possibility, and Risks of AI in an Era of Intelligent Tools and Systems’ is also known as the BRIE Working Paper 2020-5.

Canadian government and AI

The special issue on AI and governance and the the paper published by the Wilson Center stimulated my interest in the Canadian government’s approach to governance, responsibility, transparency, and AI.

There is information out there but it’s scattered across various government initiatives and ministries. Above all, it is not easy to find, open communication. Whether that’s by design or the blindness and/or ineptitude to be found in all organizations I leave that to wiser judges. (I’ve worked in small companies and they too have the problem. In colloquial terms, ‘the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing’.)

Responsible use? Maybe not after 2019

First there’s a government of Canada webpage, Responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI). Other than a note at the bottom of the page “Date modified: 2020-07-28,” all of the information dates from 2016 up to March 2019 (which you’ll find on ‘Our Timeline’). Is nothing new happening?

For anyone interested in responsible use, there are two sections “Our guiding principles” and “Directive on Automated Decision-Making” that answer some questions. I found the ‘Directive’ to be more informative with its definitions, objectives, and, even, consequences. Sadly, you need to keep clicking to find consequences and you’ll end up on The Framework for the Management of Compliance. Interestingly, deputy heads are assumed in charge of managing non-compliance. I wonder how employees deal with a non-compliant deputy head?

What about the government’s digital service?

You might think Canadian Digital Service (CDS) might also have some information about responsible use. CDS was launched in 2017, according to Luke Simon’s July 19, 2017 article on Medium,

In case you missed it, there was some exciting digital government news in Canada Tuesday. The Canadian Digital Service (CDS) launched, meaning Canada has joined other nations, including the US and the UK, that have a federal department dedicated to digital.

At the time, Simon was Director of Outreach at Code for Canada.

Presumably, CDS, from an organizational perspective, is somehow attached to the Minister of Digital Government (it’s a position with virtually no governmental infrastructure as opposed to the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development who is responsible for many departments and agencies). The current minister is Joyce Murray whose government profile offers almost no information about her work on digital services. Perhaps there’s a more informative profile of the Minister of Digital Government somewhere on a government website.

Meanwhile, they are friendly folks at CDS but they don’t offer much substantive information. From the CDS homepage,

Our aim is to make services easier for government to deliver. We collaborate with people who work in government to address service delivery problems. We test with people who need government services to find design solutions that are easy to use.

Learn more

After clicking on Learn more, I found this,

At the Canadian Digital Service (CDS), we partner up with federal departments to design, test and build simple, easy to use services. Our goal is to improve the experience – for people who deliver government services and people who use those services.

How it works

We work with our partners in the open, regularly sharing progress via public platforms. This creates a culture of learning and fosters best practices. It means non-partner departments can apply our work and use our resources to develop their own services.

Together, we form a team that follows the ‘Agile software development methodology’. This means we begin with an intensive ‘Discovery’ research phase to explore user needs and possible solutions to meeting those needs. After that, we move into a prototyping ‘Alpha’ phase to find and test ways to meet user needs. Next comes the ‘Beta’ phase, where we release the solution to the public and intensively test it. Lastly, there is a ‘Live’ phase, where the service is fully released and continues to be monitored and improved upon.

Between the Beta and Live phases, our team members step back from the service, and the partner team in the department continues the maintenance and development. We can help partners recruit their service team from both internal and external sources.

Before each phase begins, CDS and the partner sign a partnership agreement which outlines the goal and outcomes for the coming phase, how we’ll get there, and a commitment to get them done.

As you can see, there’s not a lot of detail and they don’t seem to have included anything about artificial intelligence as part of their operation. (I’ll come back to the government’s implementation of artificial intelligence and information technology later.)

Does the Treasury Board of Canada have charge of responsible AI use?

I think so but there are government departments/ministries that also have some responsibilities for AI and I haven’t seen any links back to the Treasury Board documentation.

For anyone not familiar with the Treasury Board or even if you are, December 14, 2009 article (Treasury Board of Canada: History, Organization and Issues) on Maple Leaf Web is quite informative,

The Treasury Board of Canada represent a key entity within the federal government. As an important cabinet committee and central agency, they play an important role in financial and personnel administration. Even though the Treasury Board plays a significant role in government decision making, the general public tends to know little about its operation and activities. [emphasis mine] The following article provides an introduction to the Treasury Board, with a focus on its history, responsibilities, organization, and key issues.

It seems the Minister of Digital Government, Joyce Murray is part of the Treasury Board and the Treasury Board is the source for the Digital Operations Strategic Plan: 2018-2022,

I haven’t read the entire document but the table of contents doesn’t include a heading for artificial intelligence and there wasn’t any mention of it in the opening comments.

But isn’t there a Chief Information Officer for Canada?

Herein lies a tale (I doubt I’ll ever get the real story) but the answer is a qualified ‘no’. The Chief Information Officer for Canada, Alex Benay (there is an AI aspect) stepped down in September 2019 to join a startup company according to an August 6, 2019 article by Mia Hunt for Global Government Forum,

Alex Benay has announced he will step down as Canada’s chief information officer next month to “take on new challenge” at tech start-up MindBridge.

“It is with mixed emotions that I am announcing my departure from the Government of Canada,” he said on Wednesday in a statement posted on social media, describing his time as CIO as “one heck of a ride”.

He said he is proud of the work the public service has accomplished in moving the national digital agenda forward. Among these achievements, he listed the adoption of public Cloud across government; delivering the “world’s first” ethical AI management framework; [emphasis mine] renewing decades-old policies to bring them into the digital age; and “solidifying Canada’s position as a global leader in open government”.

He also led the introduction of new digital standards in the workplace, and provided “a clear path for moving off” Canada’s failed Phoenix pay system. [emphasis mine]

I cannot find a current Chief Information of Canada despite searches but I did find this List of chief information officers (CIO) by institution. Where there was one, there are now many.

Since September 2019, Mr. Benay has moved again according to a November 7, 2019 article by Meagan Simpson on the BetaKit,website (Note: Links have been removed),

Alex Benay, the former CIO [Chief Information Officer] of Canada, has left his role at Ottawa-based Mindbridge after a short few months stint.

The news came Thursday, when KPMG announced that Benay was joining the accounting and professional services organization as partner of digital and government solutions. Benay originally announced that he was joining Mindbridge in August, after spending almost two and a half years as the CIO for the Government of Canada.

Benay joined the AI startup as its chief client officer and, at the time, was set to officially take on the role on September 3rd. According to Benay’s LinkedIn, he joined Mindbridge in August, but if the September 3rd start date is correct, Benay would have only been at Mindbridge for around three months. The former CIO of Canada was meant to be responsible for Mindbridge’s global growth as the company looked to prepare for an IPO in 2021.

Benay told The Globe and Mail that his decision to leave Mindbridge was not a question of fit, or that he considered the move a mistake. He attributed his decision to leave to conversations with Mindbridge customer KPMG, over a period of three weeks. Benay told The Globe that he was drawn to the KPMG opportunity to lead its digital and government solutions practice, something that was more familiar to him given his previous role.

Mindbridge has not completely lost what was touted as a start hire, though, as Benay will be staying on as an advisor to the startup. “This isn’t a cutting the cord and moving on to something else completely,” Benay told The Globe. “It’s a win-win for everybody.”

Via Mr. Benay, I’ve re-introduced artificial intelligence and introduced the Phoenix Pay system and now I’m linking them to government implementation of information technology in a specific case and speculating about implementation of artificial intelligence algorithms in government.

Phoenix Pay System Debacle (things are looking up), a harbinger for responsible use of artificial intelligence?

I’m happy to hear that the situation where government employees had no certainty about their paycheques is becoming better. After the ‘new’ Phoenix Pay System was implemented in early 2016, government employees found they might get the correct amount on their paycheque or might find significantly less than they were entitled to or might find huge increases.

The instability alone would be distressing but adding to it with the inability to get the problem fixed must have been devastating. Almost five years later, the problems are being resolved and people are getting paid appropriately, more often.

The estimated cost for fixing the problems was, as I recall, over $1B; I think that was a little optimistic. James Bagnall’s July 28, 2020 article for the Ottawa Citizen provides more detail, although not about the current cost, and is the source of my measured optimism,

Something odd has happened to the Phoenix Pay file of late. After four years of spitting out errors at a furious rate, the federal government’s new pay system has gone quiet.

And no, it’s not because of the even larger drama written by the coronavirus. In fact, there’s been very real progress at Public Services and Procurement Canada [PSPC; emphasis mine], the department in charge of pay operations.

Since January 2018, the peak of the madness, the backlog of all pay transactions requiring action has dropped by about half to 230,000 as of late June. Many of these involve basic queries for information about promotions, overtime and rules. The part of the backlog involving money — too little or too much pay, incorrect deductions, pay not received — has shrunk by two-thirds to 125,000.

These are still very large numbers but the underlying story here is one of long-delayed hope. The government is processing the pay of more than 330,000 employees every two weeks while simultaneously fixing large batches of past mistakes.

While officials with two of the largest government unions — Public Service Alliance of Canada [PSAC] and the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada [PPSC] — disagree the pay system has worked out its kinks, they acknowledge it’s considerably better than it was. New pay transactions are being processed “with increased timeliness and accuracy,” the PSAC official noted.

Neither union is happy with the progress being made on historical mistakes. PIPSC president Debi Daviau told this newspaper that many of her nearly 60,000 members have been waiting for years to receive salary adjustments stemming from earlier promotions or transfers, to name two of the more prominent sources of pay errors.

Even so, the sharp improvement in Phoenix Pay’s performance will soon force the government to confront an interesting choice: Should it continue with plans to replace the system?

Treasury Board, the government’s employer, two years ago launched the process to do just that. Last March, SAP Canada — whose technology underpins the pay system still in use at Canada Revenue Agency — won a competition to run a pilot project. Government insiders believe SAP Canada is on track to build the full system starting sometime in 2023.

When Public Services set out the business case in 2009 for building Phoenix Pay, it noted the pay system would have to accommodate 150 collective agreements that contained thousands of business rules and applied to dozens of federal departments and agencies. The technical challenge has since intensified.

Under the original plan, Phoenix Pay was to save $70 million annually by eliminating 1,200 compensation advisors across government and centralizing a key part of the operation at the pay centre in Miramichi, N.B., where 550 would manage a more automated system.

Instead, the Phoenix Pay system currently employs about 2,300.  This includes 1,600 at Miramichi and five regional pay offices, along with 350 each at a client contact centre (which deals with relatively minor pay issues) and client service bureau (which handles the more complex, longstanding pay errors). This has naturally driven up the average cost of managing each pay account — 55 per cent higher than the government’s former pay system according to last fall’s estimate by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

… As the backlog shrinks, the need for regional pay offices and emergency staffing will diminish. Public Services is also working with a number of high-tech firms to develop ways of accurately automating employee pay using artificial intelligence [emphasis mine].

Given the Phoenix Pay System debacle, it might be nice to see a little information about how the government is planning to integrate more sophisticated algorithms (artificial intelligence) in their operations.

I found this on a Treasury Board webpage, all 1 minute and 29 seconds of it,

The blonde model or actress mentions that companies applying to Public Services and Procurement Canada for placement on the list must use AI responsibly. Her script does not include a definition or guidelines, which, as previously noted, as on the Treasury Board website.

As for Public Services and Procurement Canada, they have an Artificial intelligence source list,

Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) is putting into operation the Artificial intelligence source list to facilitate the procurement of Canada’s requirements for Artificial intelligence (AI).

After research and consultation with industry, academia, and civil society, Canada identified 3 AI categories and business outcomes to inform this method of supply:

Insights and predictive modelling

Machine interactions

Cognitive automation

PSPC is focused only on procuring AI. If there are guidelines on their website for its use, I did not find them.

I found one more government agency that might have some information about artificial intelligence and guidelines for its use, Shared Services Canada,

Shared Services Canada (SSC) delivers digital services to Government of Canada organizations. We provide modern, secure and reliable IT services so federal organizations can deliver digital programs and services that meet Canadians needs.

Since the Minister of Digital Government, Joyce Murray, is listed on the homepage, I was hopeful that I could find out more about AI and governance and whether or not the Canadian Digital Service was associated with this government ministry/agency. I was frustrated on both counts.

To sum up, there is no information that I could find after March 2019 about Canada, it’s government and plans for AI, especially responsible management/governance and AI on a Canadian government website although I have found guidelines, expectations, and consequences for non-compliance. (Should anyone know which government agency has up-to-date information on its responsible use of AI, please let me know in the Comments.

Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR)

The first mention of the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy is in my analysis of the Canadian federal budget in a March 24, 2017 posting. Briefly, CIFAR received a big chunk of that money. Here’s more about the strategy from the CIFAR Pan-Canadian AI Strategy homepage,

In 2017, the Government of Canada appointed CIFAR to develop and lead a $125 million Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy, the world’s first national AI strategy.

CIFAR works in close collaboration with Canada’s three national AI Institutes — Amii in Edmonton, Mila in Montreal, and the Vector Institute in Toronto, as well as universities, hospitals and organizations across the country.

The objectives of the strategy are to:

Attract and retain world-class AI researchers by increasing the number of outstanding AI researchers and skilled graduates in Canada.

Foster a collaborative AI ecosystem by establishing interconnected nodes of scientific excellence in Canada’s three major centres for AI: Edmonton, Montreal, and Toronto.

Advance national AI initiatives by supporting a national research community on AI through training programs, workshops, and other collaborative opportunities.

Understand the societal implications of AI by developing global thought leadership on the economic, ethical, policy, and legal implications [emphasis mine] of advances in AI.

Responsible AI at CIFAR

You can find Responsible AI in a webspace devoted to what they have called, AI & Society. Here’s more from the homepage,

CIFAR is leading global conversations about AI’s impact on society.

The AI & Society program, one of the objectives of the CIFAR Pan-Canadian AI Strategy, develops global thought leadership on the economic, ethical, political, and legal implications of advances in AI. These dialogues deliver new ways of thinking about issues, and drive positive change in the development and deployment of responsible AI.

Solution Networks

AI Futures Policy Labs

AI & Society Workshops

Building an AI World

Under the category of building an AI World I found this (from CIFAR’s AI & Society homepage),

BUILDING AN AI WORLD

Explore the landscape of global AI strategies.

Canada was the first country in the world to announce a federally-funded national AI strategy, prompting many other nations to follow suit. CIFAR published two reports detailing the global landscape of AI strategies.

I skimmed through the second report and it seems more like a comparative study of various country’s AI strategies than a overview of responsible use of AI.

Final comments about Responsible AI in Canada and the new reports

I’m glad to see there’s interest in Responsible AI but based on my adventures searching the Canadian government websites and the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy webspace, I’m left feeling hungry for more.

I didn’t find any details about how AI is being integrated into government departments and for what uses. I’d like to know and I’d like to have some say about how it’s used and how the inevitable mistakes will be dealh with.

The great unwashed

What I’ve found is high minded, but, as far as I can tell, there’s absolutely no interest in talking to the ‘great unwashed’. Those of us who are not experts are being left out of these earlier stage conversations.

I’m sure we’ll be consulted at some point but it will be long past the time when are our opinions and insights could have impact and help us avoid the problems that experts tend not to see. What we’ll be left with is protest and anger on our part and, finally, grudging admissions and corrections of errors on the government’s part.

Let’s take this for an example. The Phoenix Pay System was implemented in its first phase on Feb. 24, 2016. As I recall, problems develop almost immediately. The second phase of implementation starts April 21, 2016. In May 2016 the government hires consultants to fix the problems. November 29, 2016 the government minister, Judy Foote, admits a mistake has been made. February 2017 the government hires consultants to establish what lessons they might learn. February 15, 2018 the pay problems backlog amounts to 633,000. Source: James Bagnall, Feb. 23, 2018 ‘timeline‘ for Ottawa Citizen

Do take a look at the timeline, there’s more to it than what I’ve written here and I’m sure there’s more to the Phoenix Pay System debacle than a failure to listen to warnings from those who would be directly affected. It’s fascinating though how often a failure to listen presages far deeper problems with a project.

The Canadian government, both a conservative and a liberal government, contributed to the Phoenix Debacle but it seems the gravest concern is with senior government bureaucrats. You might think things have changed since this recounting of the affair in a June 14, 2018 article by Michelle Zilio for the Globe and Mail,

The three public servants blamed by the Auditor-General for the Phoenix pay system problems were not fired for mismanagement of the massive technology project that botched the pay of tens of thousands of public servants for more than two years.

Marie Lemay, deputy minister for Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC), said two of the three Phoenix executives were shuffled out of their senior posts in pay administration and did not receive performance bonuses for their handling of the system. Those two employees still work for the department, she said. Ms. Lemay, who refused to identify the individuals, said the third Phoenix executive retired.

In a scathing report last month, Auditor-General Michael Ferguson blamed three “executives” – senior public servants at PSPC, which is responsible for Phoenix − for the pay system’s “incomprehensible failure.” [emphasis mine] He said the executives did not tell the then-deputy minister about the known problems with Phoenix, leading the department to launch the pay system despite clear warnings it was not ready.

Speaking to a parliamentary committee on Thursday, Ms. Lemay said the individuals did not act with “ill intent,” noting that the development and implementation of the Phoenix project were flawed. She encouraged critics to look at the “bigger picture” to learn from all of Phoenix’s failures.

Mr. Ferguson, whose office spoke with the three Phoenix executives as a part of its reporting, said the officials prioritized some aspects of the pay-system rollout, such as schedule and budget, over functionality. He said they also cancelled a pilot implementation project with one department that would have helped it detect problems indicating the system was not ready.

Mr. Ferguson’s report warned the Phoenix problems are indicative of “pervasive cultural problems” [emphasis mine] in the civil service, which he said is fearful of making mistakes, taking risks and conveying “hard truths.”

Speaking to the same parliamentary committee on Tuesday, Privy Council Clerk [emphasis mine] Michael Wernick challenged Mr. Ferguson’s assertions, saying his chapter on the federal government’s cultural issues is an “opinion piece” containing “sweeping generalizations.”

The Privy Council Clerk is the top level bureaucrat (and there is only one such clerk) in the civil/public service and I think his quotes are quite telling of “pervasive cultural problems.” There’s a new Privy Council Clerk but from what I can tell he was well trained by his predecessor.

Do* we really need senior government bureaucrats?

I now have an example of bureaucratic interference, specifically with the Global Public Health Information Network (GPHIN) where it would seem that not much has changed, from a December 26, 2020 article by Grant Robertson for the Globe & Mail,

When Canada unplugged support for its pandemic alert system [GPHIN] last year, it was a symptom of bigger problems inside the Public Health Agency. Experienced scientists were pushed aside, expertise was eroded, and internal warnings went unheeded, which hindered the department’s response to COVID-19

As a global pandemic began to take root in February, China held a series of backchannel conversations with Canada, lobbying the federal government to keep its borders open.

With the virus already taking a deadly toll in Asia, Heng Xiaojun, the Minister Counsellor for the Chinese embassy, requested a call with senior Transport Canada officials. Over the course of the conversation, the Chinese representatives communicated Beijing’s desire that flights between the two countries not be stopped because it was unnecessary.

“The Chinese position on the continuation of flights was reiterated,” say official notes taken from the call. “Mr. Heng conveyed that China is taking comprehensive measures to combat the coronavirus.”

Canadian officials seemed to agree, since no steps were taken to restrict or prohibit travel. To the federal government, China appeared to have the situation under control and the risk to Canada was low. Before ending the call, Mr. Heng thanked Ottawa for its “science and fact-based approach.”

It was a critical moment in the looming pandemic, but the Canadian government lacked the full picture, instead relying heavily on what Beijing was choosing to disclose to the World Health Organization (WHO). Ottawa’s ability to independently know what was going on in China – on the ground and inside hospitals – had been greatly diminished in recent years.

Canada once operated a robust pandemic early warning system and employed a public-health doctor based in China who could report back on emerging problems. But it had largely abandoned those international strategies over the past five years, and was no longer as plugged-in.

By late February [2020], Ottawa seemed to be taking the official reports from China at their word, stating often in its own internal risk assessments that the threat to Canada remained low. But inside the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), rank-and-file doctors and epidemiologists were growing increasingly alarmed at how the department and the government were responding.

“The team was outraged,” one public-health scientist told a colleague in early April, in an internal e-mail obtained by The Globe and Mail, criticizing the lack of urgency shown by Canada’s response during January, February and early March. “We knew this was going to be around for a long time, and it’s serious.”

China had locked down cities and restricted travel within its borders. Staff inside the Public Health Agency believed Beijing wasn’t disclosing the whole truth about the danger of the virus and how easily it was transmitted. “The agency was just too slow to respond,” the scientist said. “A sane person would know China was lying.”

It would later be revealed that China’s infection and mortality rates were played down in official records, along with key details about how the virus was spreading.

But the Public Health Agency, which was created after the 2003 SARS crisis to bolster the country against emerging disease threats, had been stripped of much of its capacity to gather outbreak intelligence and provide advance warning by the time the pandemic hit.

The Global Public Health Intelligence Network, an early warning system known as GPHIN that was once considered a cornerstone of Canada’s preparedness strategy, had been scaled back over the past several years, with resources shifted into projects that didn’t involve outbreak surveillance.

However, a series of documents obtained by The Globe during the past four months, from inside the department and through numerous Access to Information requests, show the problems that weakened Canada’s pandemic readiness run deeper than originally thought. Pleas from the international health community for Canada to take outbreak detection and surveillance much more seriously were ignored by mid-level managers [emphasis mine] inside the department. A new federal pandemic preparedness plan – key to gauging the country’s readiness for an emergency – was never fully tested. And on the global stage, the agency stopped sending experts [emphasis mine] to international meetings on pandemic preparedness, instead choosing senior civil servants with little or no public-health background [emphasis mine] to represent Canada at high-level talks, The Globe found.

The curtailing of GPHIN and allegations that scientists had become marginalized within the Public Health Agency, detailed in a Globe investigation this past July [2020], are now the subject of two federal probes – an examination by the Auditor-General of Canada and an independent federal review, ordered by the Minister of Health.

Those processes will undoubtedly reshape GPHIN and may well lead to an overhaul of how the agency functions in some areas. The first steps will be identifying and fixing what went wrong. With the country now topping 535,000 cases of COVID-19 and more than 14,700 dead, there will be lessons learned from the pandemic.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said he is unsure what role added intelligence [emphasis mine] could have played in the government’s pandemic response, though he regrets not bolstering Canada’s critical supplies of personal protective equipment sooner. But providing the intelligence to make those decisions early is exactly what GPHIN was created to do – and did in previous outbreaks.

Epidemiologists have described in detail to The Globe how vital it is to move quickly and decisively in a pandemic. Acting sooner, even by a few days or weeks in the early going, and throughout, can have an exponential impact on an outbreak, including deaths. Countries such as South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, which have fared much better than Canada, appear to have acted faster in key tactical areas, some using early warning information they gathered. As Canada prepares itself in the wake of COVID-19 for the next major health threat, building back a better system becomes paramount.

If you have time, do take a look at Robertson’s December 26, 2020 article and the July 2020 Globe investigation. As both articles make clear, senior bureaucrats whose chief attribute seems to have been longevity took over, reallocated resources, drove out experts, and crippled the few remaining experts in the system with a series of bureaucratic demands while taking trips to attend meetings (in desirable locations) for which they had no significant or useful input.

The Phoenix and GPHIN debacles bear a resemblance in that senior bureaucrats took over and in a state of blissful ignorance made a series of disastrous decisions bolstered by politicians who seem to neither understand nor care much about the outcomes.

If you think I’m being harsh watch Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reporter Rosemary Barton interview Prime Minister Trudeau for a 2020 year-end interview, Note: There are some commercials. Then, pay special attention to the Trudeau’s answer to the first question,

Responsible AI, eh?

Based on the massive mishandling of the Phoenix Pay System implementation where top bureaucrats did not follow basic and well established information services procedures and the Global Public Health Information Network mismanagement by top level bureaucrats, I’m not sure I have a lot of confidence in any Canadian government claims about a responsible approach to using artificial intelligence.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter as implementation is most likely already taking place here in Canada.

Enough with the pessimism. I feel it’s necessary to end this on a mildly positive note. Hurray to the government employees who worked through the Phoenix Pay System debacle, the current and former GPHIN experts who continued to sound warnings, and all those people striving to make true the principles of ‘Peace, Order, and Good Government’, the bedrock principles of the Canadian Parliament.

A lot of mistakes have been made but we also do make a lot of good decisions.

*’Doe’ changed to ‘Do’ on May 14, 2021.

Being smart about using artificial intelligence in the field of medicine

Since my August 20, 2018 post featured an opinion piece about the possibly imminent replacement of radiologists with artificial intelligence systems and the latest research about employing them for diagnosing eye diseases, it seems like a good time to examine some of the mythology embedded in the discussion about AI and medicine.

Imperfections in medical AI systems

An August 15, 2018 article for Slate.com by W. Nicholson Price II (who teaches at the University of Michigan School of Law; in addition to his law degree he has a PhD in Biological Sciences from Columbia University) begins with the peppy, optimistic view before veering into more critical territory (Note: Links have been removed),

For millions of people suffering from diabetes, new technology enabled by artificial intelligence promises to make management much easier. Medtronic’s Guardian Connect system promises to alert users 10 to 60 minutes before they hit high or low blood sugar level thresholds, thanks to IBM Watson, “the same supercomputer technology that can predict global weather patterns.” Startup Beta Bionics goes even further: In May, it received Food and Drug Administration approval to start clinical trials on what it calls a “bionic pancreas system” powered by artificial intelligence, capable of “automatically and autonomously managing blood sugar levels 24/7.”

An artificial pancreas powered by artificial intelligence represents a huge step forward for the treatment of diabetes—but getting it right will be hard. Artificial intelligence (also known in various iterations as deep learning and machine learning) promises to automatically learn from patterns in medical data to help us do everything from managing diabetes to finding tumors in an MRI to predicting how long patients will live. But the artificial intelligence techniques involved are typically opaque. We often don’t know how the algorithm makes the eventual decision. And they may change and learn from new data—indeed, that’s a big part of the promise. But when the technology is complicated, opaque, changing, and absolutely vital to the health of a patient, how do we make sure it works as promised?

Price describes how a ‘closed loop’ artificial pancreas with AI would automate insulin levels for diabetic patients, flaws in the automated system, and how companies like to maintain a competitive advantage (Note: Links have been removed),

[…] a “closed loop” artificial pancreas, where software handles the whole issue, receiving and interpreting signals from the monitor, deciding when and how much insulin is needed, and directing the insulin pump to provide the right amount. The first closed-loop system was approved in late 2016. The system should take as much of the issue off the mind of the patient as possible (though, of course, that has limits). Running a close-loop artificial pancreas is challenging. The way people respond to changing levels of carbohydrates is complicated, as is their response to insulin; it’s hard to model accurately. Making it even more complicated, each individual’s body reacts a little differently.

Here’s where artificial intelligence comes into play. Rather than trying explicitly to figure out the exact model for how bodies react to insulin and to carbohydrates, machine learning methods, given a lot of data, can find patterns and make predictions. And existing continuous glucose monitors (and insulin pumps) are excellent at generating a lot of data. The idea is to train artificial intelligence algorithms on vast amounts of data from diabetic patients, and to use the resulting trained algorithms to run a closed-loop artificial pancreas. Even more exciting, because the system will keep measuring blood glucose, it can learn from the new data and each patient’s artificial pancreas can customize itself over time as it acquires new data from that patient’s particular reactions.

Here’s the tough question: How will we know how well the system works? Diabetes software doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to accuracy. A 2015 study found that among smartphone apps for calculating insulin doses, two-thirds of the apps risked giving incorrect results, often substantially so. … And companies like to keep their algorithms proprietary for a competitive advantage, which makes it hard to know how they work and what flaws might have gone unnoticed in the development process.

There’s more,

These issues aren’t unique to diabetes care—other A.I. algorithms will also be complicated, opaque, and maybe kept secret by their developers. The potential for problems multiplies when an algorithm is learning from data from an entire hospital, or hospital system, or the collected data from an entire state or nation, not just a single patient. …

The [US Food and Drug Administraiont] FDA is working on this problem. The head of the agency has expressed his enthusiasm for bringing A.I. safely into medical practice, and the agency has a new Digital Health Innovation Action Plan to try to tackle some of these issues. But they’re not easy, and one thing making it harder is a general desire to keep the algorithmic sauce secret. The example of IBM Watson for Oncology has given the field a bit of a recent black eye—it turns out that the company knew the algorithm gave poor recommendations for cancer treatment but kept that secret for more than a year. …

While Price focuses on problems with algorithms and with developers and their business interests, he also hints at some of the body’s complexities.

Can AI systems be like people?

Susan Baxter, a medical writer with over 20 years experience, a PhD in health economics, and author of countless magazine articles and several books, offers a more person-centered approach to the discussion in her July 6, 2018 posting on susanbaxter.com,

The fascination with AI continues to irk, given that every second thing I read seems to be extolling the magic of AI and medicine and how It Will Change Everything. Which it will not, trust me. The essential issue of illness remains perennial and revolves around an individual for whom no amount of technology will solve anything without human contact. …

But in this world, or so we are told by AI proponents, radiologists will soon be obsolete. [my August 20, 2018 post] The adaptational learning capacities of AI mean that reading a scan or x-ray will soon be more ably done by machines than humans. The presupposition here is that we, the original programmers of this artificial intelligence, understand the vagaries of real life (and real disease) so wonderfully that we can deconstruct these much as we do the game of chess (where, let’s face it, Big Blue ate our lunch) and that analyzing a two-dimensional image of a three-dimensional body, already problematic, can be reduced to a series of algorithms.

Attempting to extrapolate what some “shadow” on a scan might mean in a flesh and blood human isn’t really quite the same as bishop to knight seven. Never mind the false positive/negatives that are considered an acceptable risk or the very real human misery they create.

Moravec called it

It’s called Moravec’s paradox, the inability of humans to realize just how complex basic physical tasks are – and the corresponding inability of AI to mimic it. As you walk across the room, carrying a glass of water, talking to your spouse/friend/cat/child; place the glass on the counter and open the dishwasher door with your foot as you open a jar of pickles at the same time, take a moment to consider just how many concurrent tasks you are doing and just how enormous the computational power these ostensibly simple moves would require.

Researchers in Singapore taught industrial robots to assemble an Ikea chair. Essentially, screw in the legs. A person could probably do this in a minute. Maybe two. The preprogrammed robots took nearly half an hour. And I suspect programming those robots took considerably longer than that.

Ironically, even Elon Musk, who has had major production problems with the Tesla cars rolling out of his high tech factory, has conceded (in a tweet) that “Humans are underrated.”

I wouldn’t necessarily go that far given the political shenanigans of Trump & Co. but in the grand scheme of things I tend to agree. …

Is AI going the way of gene therapy?

Susan draws a parallel between the AI and medicine discussion with the discussion about genetics and medicine (Note: Links have been removed),

On a somewhat similar note – given the extent to which genetics discourse has that same linear, mechanistic  tone [as AI and medicine] – it turns out all this fine talk of using genetics to determine health risk and whatnot is based on nothing more than clever marketing, since a lot of companies are making a lot of money off our belief in DNA. Truth is half the time we don’t even know what a gene is never mind what it actually does;  geneticists still can’t agree on how many genes there are in a human genome, as this article in Nature points out.

Along the same lines, I was most amused to read about something called the Super Seniors Study, research following a group of individuals in their 80’s, 90’s and 100’s who seem to be doing really well. Launched in 2002 and headed by Angela Brooks Wilson, a geneticist at the BC [British Columbia] Cancer Agency and SFU [Simon Fraser University] Chair of biomedical physiology and kinesiology, this longitudinal work is examining possible factors involved in healthy ageing.

Turns out genes had nothing to do with it, the title of the Globe and Mail article notwithstanding. (“Could the DNA of these super seniors hold the secret to healthy aging?” The answer, a resounding “no”, well hidden at the very [end], the part most people wouldn’t even get to.) All of these individuals who were racing about exercising and working part time and living the kind of life that makes one tired just reading about it all had the same “multiple (genetic) factors linked to a high probability of disease”. You know, the gene markers they tell us are “linked” to cancer, heart disease, etc., etc. But these super seniors had all those markers but none of the diseases, demonstrating (pretty strongly) that the so-called genetic links to disease are a load of bunkum. Which (she said modestly) I have been saying for more years than I care to remember. You’re welcome.

The fundamental error in this type of linear thinking is in allowing our metaphors (genes are the “blueprint” of life) and propensity towards social ideas of determinism to overtake common sense. Biological and physiological systems are not static; they respond to and change to life in its entirety, whether it’s diet and nutrition to toxic or traumatic insults. Immunity alters, endocrinology changes, – even how we think and feel affects the efficiency and effectiveness of physiology. Which explains why as we age we become increasingly dissimilar.

If you have the time, I encourage to read Susan’s comments in their entirety.

Scientific certainties

Following on with genetics, gene therapy dreams, and the complexity of biology, the June 19, 2018 Nature article by Cassandra Willyard (mentioned in Susan’s posting) highlights an aspect of scientific research not often mentioned in public,

One of the earliest attempts to estimate the number of genes in the human genome involved tipsy geneticists, a bar in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, and pure guesswork.

That was in 2000, when a draft human genome sequence was still in the works; geneticists were running a sweepstake on how many genes humans have, and wagers ranged from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. Almost two decades later, scientists armed with real data still can’t agree on the number — a knowledge gap that they say hampers efforts to spot disease-related mutations.

In 2000, with the genomics community abuzz over the question of how many human genes would be found, Ewan Birney launched the GeneSweep contest. Birney, now co-director of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) in Hinxton, UK, took the first bets at a bar during an annual genetics meeting, and the contest eventually attracted more than 1,000 entries and a US$3,000 jackpot. Bets on the number of genes ranged from more than 312,000 to just under 26,000, with an average of around 40,000. These days, the span of estimates has shrunk — with most now between 19,000 and 22,000 — but there is still disagreement (See ‘Gene Tally’).

… the inconsistencies in the number of genes from database to database are problematic for researchers, Pruitt says. “People want one answer,” she [Kim Pruitt, a genome researcher at the US National Center for Biotechnology Information {NCB}] in Bethesda, Maryland] adds, “but biology is complex.”

I wanted to note that scientists do make guesses and not just with genetics. For example, Gina Mallet’s 2005 book ‘Last Chance to Eat: The Fate of Taste in a Fast Food World’ recounts the story of how good and bad levels of cholesterol were established—the experts made some guesses based on their experience. That said, Willyard’s article details the continuing effort to nail down the number of genes almost 20 years after the human genome project was completed and delves into the problems the scientists have uncovered.

Final comments

In addition to opaque processes with developers/entrepreneurs wanting to maintain their secrets for competitive advantages and in addition to our own poor understanding of the human body (how many genes are there anyway?), there are same major gaps (reflected in AI) in our understanding of various diseases. Angela Lashbrook’s August 16, 2018 article for The Atlantic highlights some issues with skin cancer and shade of your skin (Note: Links have been removed),

… While fair-skinned people are at the highest risk for contracting skin cancer, the mortality rate for African Americans is considerably higher: Their five-year survival rate is 73 percent, compared with 90 percent for white Americans, according to the American Academy of Dermatology.

As the rates of melanoma for all Americans continue a 30-year climb, dermatologists have begun exploring new technologies to try to reverse this deadly trend—including artificial intelligence. There’s been a growing hope in the field that using machine-learning algorithms to diagnose skin cancers and other skin issues could make for more efficient doctor visits and increased, reliable diagnoses. The earliest results are promising—but also potentially dangerous for darker-skinned patients.

… Avery Smith, … a software engineer in Baltimore, Maryland, co-authored a paper in JAMA [Journal of the American Medical Association] Dermatology that warns of the potential racial disparities that could come from relying on machine learning for skin-cancer screenings. Smith’s co-author, Adewole Adamson of the University of Texas at Austin, has conducted multiple studies on demographic imbalances in dermatology. “African Americans have the highest mortality rate [for skin cancer], and doctors aren’t trained on that particular skin type,” Smith told me over the phone. “When I came across the machine-learning software, one of the first things I thought was how it will perform on black people.”

Recently, a study that tested machine-learning software in dermatology, conducted by a group of researchers primarily out of Germany, found that “deep-learning convolutional neural networks,” or CNN, detected potentially cancerous skin lesions better than the 58 dermatologists included in the study group. The data used for the study come from the International Skin Imaging Collaboration, or ISIC, an open-source repository of skin images to be used by machine-learning algorithms. Given the rise in melanoma cases in the United States, a machine-learning algorithm that assists dermatologists in diagnosing skin cancer earlier could conceivably save thousands of lives each year.

… Chief among the prohibitive issues, according to Smith and Adamson, is that the data the CNN relies on come from primarily fair-skinned populations in the United States, Australia, and Europe. If the algorithm is basing most of its knowledge on how skin lesions appear on fair skin, then theoretically, lesions on patients of color are less likely to be diagnosed. “If you don’t teach the algorithm with a diverse set of images, then that algorithm won’t work out in the public that is diverse,” says Adamson. “So there’s risk, then, for people with skin of color to fall through the cracks.”

As Adamson and Smith’s paper points out, racial disparities in artificial intelligence and machine learning are not a new issue. Algorithms have mistaken images of black people for gorillas, misunderstood Asians to be blinking when they weren’t, and “judged” only white people to be attractive. An even more dangerous issue, according to the paper, is that decades of clinical research have focused primarily on people with light skin, leaving out marginalized communities whose symptoms may present differently.

The reasons for this exclusion are complex. According to Andrew Alexis, a dermatologist at Mount Sinai, in New York City, and the director of the Skin of Color Center, compounding factors include a lack of medical professionals from marginalized communities, inadequate information about those communities, and socioeconomic barriers to participating in research. “In the absence of a diverse study population that reflects that of the U.S. population, potential safety or efficacy considerations could be missed,” he says.

Adamson agrees, elaborating that with inadequate data, machine learning could misdiagnose people of color with nonexistent skin cancers—or miss them entirely. But he understands why the field of dermatology would surge ahead without demographically complete data. “Part of the problem is that people are in such a rush. This happens with any new tech, whether it’s a new drug or test. Folks see how it can be useful and they go full steam ahead without thinking of potential clinical consequences. …

Improving machine-learning algorithms is far from the only method to ensure that people with darker skin tones are protected against the sun and receive diagnoses earlier, when many cancers are more survivable. According to the Skin Cancer Foundation, 63 percent of African Americans don’t wear sunscreen; both they and many dermatologists are more likely to delay diagnosis and treatment because of the belief that dark skin is adequate protection from the sun’s harmful rays. And due to racial disparities in access to health care in America, African Americans are less likely to get treatment in time.

Happy endings

I’ll add one thing to Price’s article, Susan’s posting, and Lashbrook’s article about the issues with AI , certainty, gene therapy, and medicine—the desire for a happy ending prefaced with an easy solution. If the easy solution isn’t possible accommodations will be made but that happy ending is a must. All disease will disappear and there will be peace on earth. (Nod to Susan Baxter and her many discussions with me about disease processes and happy endings.)

The solutions, for the most part, are seen as technological despite the mountain of evidence suggesting that technology reflects our own imperfect understanding of health and disease therefore providing what is at best an imperfect solution.

Also, we tend to underestimate just how complex humans are not only in terms of disease and health but also with regard to our skills, understanding, and, perhaps not often enough, our ability to respond appropriately in the moment.

There is much to celebrate in what has been accomplished: no more black death, no more smallpox, hip replacements, pacemakers, organ transplants, and much more. Yes, we should try to improve our medicine. But, maybe alongside the celebration we can welcome AI and other technologies with a lot less hype and a lot more skepticism.

Changing synaptic connectivity with a memristor

The French have announced some research into memristive devices that mimic both short-term and long-term neural plasticity according to a Dec. 6, 2016 news item on Nanowerk,

Leti researchers have demonstrated that memristive devices are excellent candidates to emulate synaptic plasticity, the capability of synapses to enhance or diminish their connectivity between neurons, which is widely believed to be the cellular basis for learning and memory.

The breakthrough was presented today [Dec. 6, 2016] at IEDM [International Electron Devices Meeting] 2016 in San Francisco in the paper, “Experimental Demonstration of Short and Long Term Synaptic Plasticity Using OxRAM Multi k-bit Arrays for Reliable Detection in Highly Noisy Input Data”.

Neural systems such as the human brain exhibit various types and time periods of plasticity, e.g. synaptic modifications can last anywhere from seconds to days or months. However, prior research in utilizing synaptic plasticity using memristive devices relied primarily on simplified rules for plasticity and learning.

The project team, which includes researchers from Leti’s sister institute at CEA Tech, List, along with INSERM and Clinatec, proposed an architecture that implements both short- and long-term plasticity (STP and LTP) using RRAM devices.

A Dec. 6, 2016 Laboratoire d’électronique des technologies de l’information (LETI) press release, which originated the news item, elaborates,

“While implementing a learning rule for permanent modifications – LTP, based on spike-timing-dependent plasticity – we also incorporated the possibility of short-term modifications with STP, based on the Tsodyks/Markram model,” said Elisa Vianello, Leti non-volatile memories and cognitive computing specialist/research engineer. “We showed the benefits of utilizing both kinds of plasticity with visual pattern extraction and decoding of neural signals. LTP allows our artificial neural networks to learn patterns, and STP makes the learning process very robust against environmental noise.”

Resistive random-access memory (RRAM) devices coupled with a spike-coding scheme are key to implementing unsupervised learning with minimal hardware footprint and low power consumption. Embedding neuromorphic learning into low-power devices could enable design of autonomous systems, such as a brain-machine interface that makes decisions based on real-time, on-line processing of in-vivo recorded biological signals. Biological data are intrinsically highly noisy and the proposed combined LTP and STP learning rule is a powerful technique to improve the detection/recognition rate. This approach may enable the design of autonomous implantable devices for rehabilitation purposes

Leti, which has worked on RRAM to develop hardware neuromorphic architectures since 2010, is the coordinator of the H2020 [Horizon 2020] European project NeuRAM3. That project is working on fabricating a chip with architecture that supports state-of-the-art machine-learning algorithms and spike-based learning mechanisms.

That’s it folks.

Removing gender-based stereotypes from algorithms

Most people don’t think of algorithms as having biases and stereotypes but Michael Zou in his Sept. 26, 2016 essay for The Conversation (h/t phys.org Sept. 26, 2016 news item) says different, Note: Links have been removed,

Machine learning is ubiquitous in our daily lives. Every time we talk to our smartphones, search for images or ask for restaurant recommendations, we are interacting with machine learning algorithms. They take as input large amounts of raw data, like the entire text of an encyclopedia, or the entire archives of a newspaper, and analyze the information to extract patterns that might not be visible to human analysts. But when these large data sets include social bias, the machines learn that too.

A machine learning algorithm is like a newborn baby that has been given millions of books to read without being taught the alphabet or knowing any words or grammar. The power of this type of information processing is impressive, but there is a problem. When it takes in the text data, a computer observes relationships between words based on various factors, including how often they are used together.

We can test how well the word relationships are identified by using analogy puzzles. Suppose I ask the system to complete the analogy “He is to King as She is to X.” If the system comes back with “Queen,” then we would say it is successful, because it returns the same answer a human would.

Our research group trained the system on Google News articles, and then asked it to complete a different analogy: “Man is to Computer Programmer as Woman is to X.” The answer came back: “Homemaker.”

Zou explains how a machine (algorithm) learns and then notes this,

Not only can the algorithm reflect society’s biases – demonstrating how much those biases are contained in the input data – but the system can potentially amplify gender stereotypes. Suppose I search for “computer programmer” and the search program uses a gender-biased database that associates that term more closely with a man than a woman.

The search results could come back flawed by the bias. Because “John” as a male name is more closely related to “computer programmer” than the female name “Mary” in the biased data set, the search program could evaluate John’s website as more relevant to the search than Mary’s – even if the two websites are identical except for the names and gender pronouns.

It’s true that the biased data set could actually reflect factual reality – perhaps there are more “Johns” who are programmers than there are “Marys” – and the algorithms simply capture these biases. This does not absolve the responsibility of machine learning in combating potentially harmful stereotypes. The biased results would not just repeat but could even boost the statistical bias that most programmers are male, by moving the few female programmers lower in the search results. It’s useful and important to have an alternative that’s not biased.

There is a way according to Zou that stereotypes can be removed,

Our debiasing system uses real people to identify examples of the types of connections that are appropriate (brother/sister, king/queen) and those that should be removed. Then, using these human-generated distinctions, we quantified the degree to which gender was a factor in those word choices – as opposed to, say, family relationships or words relating to royalty.

Next we told our machine-learning algorithm to remove the gender factor from the connections in the embedding. This removes the biased stereotypes without reducing the overall usefulness of the embedding.

When that is done, we found that the machine learning algorithm no longer exhibits blatant gender stereotypes. We are investigating applying related ideas to remove other types of biases in the embedding, such as racial or cultural stereotypes.

If you have time, I encourage you to read the essay in its entirety and this June 14, 2016 posting about research into algorithms and how they make decisions for you about credit, medical diagnoses, job opportunities and more.

There’s also an Oct. 24, 2016 article by Michael Light on Salon.com on the topic (Note: Links have been removed),

In a recent book that was longlisted for the National Book Award, Cathy O’Neil, a data scientist, blogger and former hedge-fund quant, details a number of flawed algorithms to which we have given incredible power — she calls them “Weapons of Math Destruction.” We have entrusted these WMDs to make important, potentially life-altering decisions, yet in many cases, they embed human race and class biases; in other cases, they don’t function at all.
Among other examples, O’Neil examines a “value-added” model New York City used to decide which teachers to fire, even though, she writes, the algorithm was useless, functioning essentially as a random number generator, arbitrarily ending careers. She looks at models put to use by judges to assign recidivism scores to inmates that ended up having a racist inclination. And she looks at how algorithms are contributing to American partisanship, allowing political operatives to target voters with information that plays to their existing biases and fears.

I recommend reading Light’s article in its entirety.

Accountability for artificial intelligence decision-making

How does an artificial intelligence program arrive at its decisions? It’s a question that’s not academic any more as these programs take on more decision-making chores according to a May 25, 2016 Carnegie Mellon University news release (also on EurekAlert) by Bryon Spice (Note: Links have been removed),

Machine-learning algorithms increasingly make decisions about credit, medical diagnoses, personalized recommendations, advertising and job opportunities, among other things, but exactly how usually remains a mystery. Now, new measurement methods developed by Carnegie Mellon University [CMU] researchers could provide important insights to this process.

Was it a person’s age, gender or education level that had the most influence on a decision? Was it a particular combination of factors? CMU’s Quantitative Input Influence (QII) measures can provide the relative weight of each factor in the final decision, said Anupam Datta, associate professor of computer science and electrical and computer engineering.

It’s reassuring to know that more requests for transparency of the decision-making process are being made. After all, it’s disconcerting that someone with the life experience of a gnat and/or possibly some issues might be developing an algorithm that could affection your life in some fundamental ways. Here’s more from the news release (Note: Links have been removed),

“Demands for algorithmic transparency are increasing as the use of algorithmic decision-making systems grows and as people realize the potential of these systems to introduce or perpetuate racial or sex discrimination or other social harms,” Datta said.

“Some companies are already beginning to provide transparency reports, but work on the computational foundations for these reports has been limited,” he continued. “Our goal was to develop measures of the degree of influence of each factor considered by a system, which could be used to generate transparency reports.”

These reports might be generated in response to a particular incident — why an individual’s loan application was rejected, or why police targeted an individual for scrutiny, or what prompted a particular medical diagnosis or treatment. Or they might be used proactively by an organization to see if an artificial intelligence system is working as desired, or by a regulatory agency to see whether a decision-making system inappropriately discriminated between groups of people.

Datta, along with Shayak Sen, a Ph.D. student in computer science, and Yair Zick, a post-doctoral researcher in the Computer Science Department, will present their report on QII at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, May 23–25 [2016], in San Jose, Calif.

Generating these QII measures requires access to the system, but doesn’t necessitate analyzing the code or other inner workings of the system, Datta said. It also requires some knowledge of the input dataset that was initially used to train the machine-learning system.

A distinctive feature of QII measures is that they can explain decisions of a large class of existing machine-learning systems. A significant body of prior work takes a complementary approach, redesigning machine-learning systems to make their decisions more interpretable and sometimes losing prediction accuracy in the process.

QII measures carefully account for correlated inputs while measuring influence. For example, consider a system that assists in hiring decisions for a moving company. Two inputs, gender and the ability to lift heavy weights, are positively correlated with each other and with hiring decisions. Yet transparency into whether the system uses weight-lifting ability or gender in making its decisions has substantive implications for determining if it is engaging in discrimination.

“That’s why we incorporate ideas for causal measurement in defining QII,” Sen said. “Roughly, to measure the influence of gender for a specific individual in the example above, we keep the weight-lifting ability fixed, vary gender and check whether there is a difference in the decision.”

Observing that single inputs may not always have high influence, the QII measures also quantify the joint influence of a set of inputs, such as age and income, on outcomes and the marginal influence of each input within the set. Since a single input may be part of multiple influential sets, the average marginal influence of the input is computed using principled game-theoretic aggregation measures previously applied to measure influence in revenue division and voting.

“To get a sense of these influence measures, consider the U.S. presidential election,” Zick said. “California and Texas have influence because they have many voters, whereas Pennsylvania and Ohio have power because they are often swing states. The influence aggregation measures we employ account for both kinds of power.”

The researchers tested their approach against some standard machine-learning algorithms that they used to train decision-making systems on real data sets. They found that the QII provided better explanations than standard associative measures for a host of scenarios they considered, including sample applications for predictive policing and income prediction.

Now, they are seeking collaboration with industrial partners so that they can employ QII at scale on operational machine-learning systems.

Here’s a link to and a citation for a PDF of the paper presented at the May 2016 conference,

Algorithmic Transparency via Quantitative Input Influence: Theory and Experiments with Learning Systems by Anupam Datta, Shayak Sen, Yair Zick. Presented at the at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, May 23–25, in San Jose, Calif.

I’ve also embedded the paper here,

CarnegieMellon_AlgorithmicTransparency

Performances Tom Hanks never gave

The answer to the question, “What makes Tom Hanks look like Tom  Hanks?” leads to machine learning and algorithms according to a Dec. 7, 2015 University of Washington University news release (also on EurekAlert) Note: Link have been removed,

Tom Hanks has appeared in many acting roles over the years, playing young and old, smart and simple. Yet we always recognize him as Tom Hanks.

Why? Is it his appearance? His mannerisms? The way he moves?

University of Washington researchers have demonstrated that it’s possible for machine learning algorithms to capture the “persona” and create a digital model of a well-photographed person like Tom Hanks from the vast number of images of them available on the Internet.

With enough visual data to mine, the algorithms can also animate the digital model of Tom Hanks to deliver speeches that the real actor never performed.

“One answer to what makes Tom Hanks look like Tom Hanks can be demonstrated with a computer system that imitates what Tom Hanks will do,” said lead author Supasorn Suwajanakorn, a UW graduate student in computer science and engineering.

As for the performances Tom Hanks never gave, the news release offers more detail,

The technology relies on advances in 3-D face reconstruction, tracking, alignment, multi-texture modeling and puppeteering that have been developed over the last five years by a research group led by UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman. The new results will be presented in a paper at the International Conference on Computer Vision in Chile on Dec. 16.

The team’s latest advances include the ability to transfer expressions and the way a particular person speaks onto the face of someone else — for instance, mapping former president George W. Bush’s mannerisms onto the faces of other politicians and celebrities.

Here’s a video demonstrating how former President Bush’s speech and mannerisms have mapped onto other famous faces including Hanks’s,

The research team has future plans for this technology (from the news release)

It’s one step toward a grand goal shared by the UW computer vision researchers: creating fully interactive, three-dimensional digital personas from family photo albums and videos, historic collections or other existing visuals.

As virtual and augmented reality technologies develop, they envision using family photographs and videos to create an interactive model of a relative living overseas or a far-away grandparent, rather than simply Skyping in two dimensions.

“You might one day be able to put on a pair of augmented reality glasses and there is a 3-D model of your mother on the couch,” said senior author Kemelmacher-Shlizerman. “Such technology doesn’t exist yet — the display technology is moving forward really fast — but how do you actually re-create your mother in three dimensions?”

One day the reconstruction technology could be taken a step further, researchers say.

“Imagine being able to have a conversation with anyone you can’t actually get to meet in person — LeBron James, Barack Obama, Charlie Chaplin — and interact with them,” said co-author Steve Seitz, UW professor of computer science and engineering. “We’re trying to get there through a series of research steps. One of the true tests is can you have them say things that they didn’t say but it still feels like them? This paper is demonstrating that ability.”

Existing technologies to create detailed three-dimensional holograms or digital movie characters like Benjamin Button often rely on bringing a person into an elaborate studio. They painstakingly capture every angle of the person and the way they move — something that can’t be done in a living room.

Other approaches still require a person to be scanned by a camera to create basic avatars for video games or other virtual environments. But the UW computer vision experts wanted to digitally reconstruct a person based solely on a random collection of existing images.

To reconstruct celebrities like Tom Hanks, Barack Obama and Daniel Craig, the machine learning algorithms mined a minimum of 200 Internet images taken over time in various scenarios and poses — a process known as learning ‘in the wild.’

“We asked, ‘Can you take Internet photos or your personal photo collection and animate a model without having that person interact with a camera?'” said Kemelmacher-Shlizerman. “Over the years we created algorithms that work with this kind of unconstrained data, which is a big deal.”

Suwajanakorn more recently developed techniques to capture expression-dependent textures — small differences that occur when a person smiles or looks puzzled or moves his or her mouth, for example.

By manipulating the lighting conditions across different photographs, he developed a new approach to densely map the differences from one person’s features and expressions onto another person’s face. That breakthrough enables the team to ‘control’ the digital model with a video of another person, and could potentially enable a host of new animation and virtual reality applications.

“How do you map one person’s performance onto someone else’s face without losing their identity?” said Seitz. “That’s one of the more interesting aspects of this work. We’ve shown you can have George Bush’s expressions and mouth and movements, but it still looks like George Clooney.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper presented at the conference in Chile,

What Makes Tom Hanks Look Like Tom Hanks by Supasorn Suwajanakorn, Steven M. Seitz, Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman for the 2015 ICCV conference, Dec. 13 – 15, 2015 in Chile.

You can find out more about the conference here.