A tool to overcome technical barriers for bias assessment in human language technologies

Automatic processing of language is becoming pervasive in our lives, oftentaking central roles in our decision making, like choosing the wording for ourmessages and mails, translating our readings, or even having full conversationswith us. Word embeddings are a key component of modern natural languageprocessing systems. They provide a representation of words that has boosted theperformance of many applications, working as a semblance of meaning. Wordembeddings seem to capture a semblance of the meaning of words from raw text,but, at the same time, they also distill stereotypes and societal biases whichare subsequently relayed to the final applications. Such biases can bediscriminatory. It is very important to detect and mitigate those biases, toprevent discriminatory behaviors of automated processes, which can be much moreharmful than in the case of humans because their of their scale. There arecurrently many tools and techniques to detect and mitigate biases in wordembeddings, but they present many barriers for the engagement of people withouttechnical skills. As it happens, most of the experts in bias, either socialscientists or people with deep knowledge of the context where bias is harmful,do not have such skills, and they cannot engage in the processes of biasdetection because of the technical barriers. We have studied the barriers inexisting tools and have explored their possibilities and limitations withdifferent kinds of users. With this exploration, we propose to develop a toolthat is specially aimed to lower the technical barriers and provide theexploration power to address the requirements of experts, scientists and peoplein general who are willing to audit these technologies.Fil: Alemany, Laura Alonso. Fundación Via Libre; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía y Física; ArgentinaFil: Benotti, Luciana. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía y Física; Argentina. Fundación Via Libre; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Gonzalez, Lucía. Fundación Via Libre; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía y Física; ArgentinaFil: Maina, Hernán Javier. Fundación Via Libre; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía y Física; ArgentinaFil: Busaniche, Beatriz. Fundación Via Libre; ArgentinaFil: Halvorsen, Alexia. Fundación Via Libre; ArgentinaFil: Bordone, Matías. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía y Física; Argentina. Fundación Via Libre; ArgentinaFil: Sanchez, Jorge Adrian. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía y Física; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

A methodology to characterize bias and harmful stereotypes in natural language processing in Latin America

Automated decision-making systems, especially those based on natural language processing, are pervasive in our lives. They are not only behind the internet search engines we use daily, but also take more critical roles: selecting candidates for a job, determining suspects of a crime, diagnosing autism and more. Such automated systems make errors, which may be harmful in many ways, be it because of the severity of the consequences (as in health issues) or because of the sheer number of people they affect. When errors made by an automated system affect a population more than others, we call the system \textit{biased}. Most modern natural language technologies are based on artifacts obtained from enormous volumes of text using machine learning, namely language models and word embeddings. Since they are created by applying subsymbolic machine learning, mostly artificial neural networks, they are opaque and practically uninterpretable by direct inspection, thus making it very difficult to audit them. In this paper, we present a methodology that spells out how social scientists, domain experts, and machine learning experts can collaboratively explore biases and harmful stereotypes in word embeddings and large language models. Our methodology is based on the following principles: * focus on the linguistic manifestations of discrimination on word embeddings and language models, not on the mathematical properties of the models * reduce the technical barrier for discrimination experts%, be it social scientists, domain experts or other * characterize through a qualitative exploratory process in addition to a metric-based approach * address mitigation as part of the training process, not as an afterthough

El dossier copia/sur: problemas económicos, políticos, e ideológicos del copyright (derecho de autor) en el sur global

In 2005, a group of scholars and activists, mostly from the global South, created the Copy/South Research Group to analyse, criticise, and confront the oppressive nature of current global copyright regimes, such as those defended by the World Intellectual Property Organisation, and similar ones around the globe. In May 2006, 22 of us, including 15 people from the global South, published THE COPY/SOUTH DOSSIER: Issues in the economics, politics, and ideology of copyright in the global South. The aim of the Dossier was to open up a critical and radical debate on the real impact of copyright laws and how they affect the daily lives of people living in more than 150 developing countries of the global South. We also highlighted issues that are not unique to the Global South, but also affect both sides of the North-South divide. This publication of more than 50 articles was addressed to researchers, educators, librarians, musicians, activists, organizations concerned about access to knowledge, and all of those who want to learn more about the oppressive global role of copyright laws and, in particular, their largely negative role in the developing countries of the global South. Given the democratic objectives of the Copy/South Research Group, the Dossier was not restricted by copyright. Therefore, it has been accessed openly and freely in both electronic and paper formats by thousands of readers from around the world in English. But English is not spoken by all citizens in the global South. With this in mind, the entire 200-page Dossier was translated into Spanish in late 2007 by an enthusiastic team of voluntary translators from Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Mexico, Spain, and Venezuela. As for this Spanish version, made with the support of the Intellectual Property Automous Service (SAPI), from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, we must acknowledge the prior SAPI's General Director Eduardo Samán for promoting the making of this translation. Besides the general revision of Gerardo Cárdenas and his labor as main translator, some other volunteers translated or revised important sections of the Spanish edition: María Jesús Morillo (Spain), Oscar Pérez Peña and Gilda Gil (Cuba), Edgardo Civallero (Argentina) and Rafael Carreño (Venezuela), who coordinated the process of translation in 2007. Also it is worth to mention the additional colaboration of Ana Lía López (Bolivia), Richard Castro, Rafael Bellota and Carmen Chirinos (Venezuela), Zapopan Muela and Gonzalo Lara (Mexico), and Lilian Álvarez (Cuba). But what is still more extraordinary about this Spanish translation is that it was completely coordinated and edited by the Servicio Autonomo de la Propiedad Intelectual (SAPI) of the democratic government of the Venezuelan Bolivarian Republic. The Dossier provides “useful material to introduce this topic to teachers and students” and does a good job of “summarizing a complex and conflicting situation” for developing countries, Jumersi La Rosa, SAPI’s new director, said last week in announcing the release of the Spanish edition. She has written a special new introduction for the Spanish-language edition. The Copy South Research Group is very pleased that the radical message of resistance found in the Dossier can now be read by thousands of Spanish-language speakers who are questioning the current copyright regime and who hopefully will be ignited by the ideas in the Dossier to take up the fight against oppressive regimes based on copyright. You can get a copy of the Dossier in Spanish and English by downloading it, free of charge, at http://www.copysouth.org . We also still have a limited number of printed and bound copies of the English-language version of the Dossier. If you would to be mailed a copy of the English-language version, which contains eight posters, send us an e-mail ([email protected]) and include your full postal details. COPY/SOUTH RESEARCH GROUP, 28 April 2008

El dossier copia/sur: problemas económicos, políticos, e ideológicos del copyright (derecho de autor) en el sur global

In 2005, a group of scholars and activists, mostly from the global South, created the Copy/South Research Group to analyse, criticise, and confront the oppressive nature of current global copyright regimes, such as those defended by the World Intellectual Property Organisation, and similar ones around the globe. In May 2006, 22 of us, including 15 people from the global South, published THE COPY/SOUTH DOSSIER: Issues in the economics, politics, and ideology of copyright in the global South. The aim of the Dossier was to open up a critical and radical debate on the real impact of copyright laws and how they affect the daily lives of people living in more than 150 developing countries of the global South. We also highlighted issues that are not unique to the Global South, but also affect both sides of the North-South divide. This publication of more than 50 articles was addressed to researchers, educators, librarians, musicians, activists, organizations concerned about access to knowledge, and all of those who want to learn more about the oppressive global role of copyright laws and, in particular, their largely negative role in the developing countries of the global South. Given the democratic objectives of the Copy/South Research Group, the Dossier was not restricted by copyright. Therefore, it has been accessed openly and freely in both electronic and paper formats by thousands of readers from around the world in English. But English is not spoken by all citizens in the global South. With this in mind, the entire 200-page Dossier was translated into Spanish in late 2007 by an enthusiastic team of voluntary translators from Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Mexico, Spain, and Venezuela. As for this Spanish version, made with the support of the Intellectual Property Automous Service (SAPI), from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, we must acknowledge the prior SAPI's General Director Eduardo Samán for promoting the making of this translation. Besides the general revision of Gerardo Cárdenas and his labor as main translator, some other volunteers translated or revised important sections of the Spanish edition: María Jesús Morillo (Spain), Oscar Pérez Peña and Gilda Gil (Cuba), Edgardo Civallero (Argentina) and Rafael Carreño (Venezuela), who coordinated the process of translation in 2007. Also it is worth to mention the additional colaboration of Ana Lía López (Bolivia), Richard Castro, Rafael Bellota and Carmen Chirinos (Venezuela), Zapopan Muela and Gonzalo Lara (Mexico), and Lilian Álvarez (Cuba). But what is still more extraordinary about this Spanish translation is that it was completely coordinated and edited by the Servicio Autonomo de la Propiedad Intelectual (SAPI) of the democratic government of the Venezuelan Bolivarian Republic. The Dossier provides “useful material to introduce this topic to teachers and students” and does a good job of “summarizing a complex and conflicting situation” for developing countries, Jumersi La Rosa, SAPI’s new director, said last week in announcing the release of the Spanish edition. She has written a special new introduction for the Spanish-language edition. The Copy South Research Group is very pleased that the radical message of resistance found in the Dossier can now be read by thousands of Spanish-language speakers who are questioning the current copyright regime and who hopefully will be ignited by the ideas in the Dossier to take up the fight against oppressive regimes based on copyright. You can get a copy of the Dossier in Spanish and English by downloading it, free of charge, at http://www.copysouth.org . We also still have a limited number of printed and bound copies of the English-language version of the Dossier. If you would to be mailed a copy of the English-language version, which contains eight posters, send us an e-mail ([email protected]) and include your full postal details. COPY/SOUTH RESEARCH GROUP, 28 April 2008

Argentina copyleft : La crisis del modelo de derecho de autor y las prácticas para democratizar la cultura

La Ley de Propiedad Intelectual de Argentina data de 1933 y ha sufrido sucesivas modificaciones a lo largo de los años. Casi todas fueron fruto del cabildeo de las industrias del entretenimiento que sólo se preocupan por sus propios intereses y pugnan por extender los monopolios y agregar nuevas restricciones. El problema principal es que no existe debate público al respecto. Parece ser que la regulación de la cultura es un tema que sólo atañe a las corporaciones vinculadas al negocio del entretenimiento, a sus abogados y a ciertos artistas. Sin embargo, y con más razón a partir de la digitalización masiva de la cultura, somos muchos más los que aspiramos a contribuir a estos debates. Somos usuarios de internet, bibliotecarios, docentes y estudiantes, músicos independientes, wikipedistas, editores, escritores, programadores, artistas, amantes de la cultura, comunicadores. Somos ciudadanos que reivindicamos el ejercicio pleno de nuestros derechos culturales. Este libro pretende dar cuenta de esas otras voces que tienen algo que aportar en relación a la Ley de Propiedad Intelectual en Argentina. Los afectados por los monopolios y los que de una forma u otra buscamos salir de ellos, reivindicar los derechos culturales, explorar formas de construcción de una manera más justa de crear, distribuir y fortalecer nuestro acervo cultural para el bien común.Fundación Vía Libr

Argentina Copyleft! Neue Spielregeln für das digitale Zeitalter? Ein Blick nach Argentinien

Das Regionalbüro Cono Sur der Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung hat sich im Rahmen seiner Arbeit zum Recht auf Bildung und Partizipation für die Erstellung dieses Bandes zum Urheberrecht in Argentinien entschieden. Anlässlich der Präsentation Argentiniens als Ehrengast der Frankfurter Buchmesse 2010 will die vorliegende Publikation eine Annäherung an diesen komplexen Zusammenhang zwischen einer äußerst restriktiven Urheberrechtspraxis und dem Zugang zu Wissen und Bildung als wesentlichen Elementen für die Entwicklung und Stärkung einer partizipativen Demokratie bieten. Wir danken der Stiftung Via Libre und insbesondere Beatriz Busaniche für die hervorragende editorische Arbeit und den Autorinnen und Autoren für die anregenden Beiträge.Fundación Vía Libre / Fundación Heinrich Böll - Cono Su

Argentina Copyleft! Neue Spielregeln für das digitale Zeitalter? Ein Blick nach Argentinien

Das Regionalbüro Cono Sur der Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung hat sich im Rahmen seiner Arbeit zum Recht auf Bildung und Partizipation für die Erstellung dieses Bandes zum Urheberrecht in Argentinien entschieden. Anlässlich der Präsentation Argentiniens als Ehrengast der Frankfurter Buchmesse 2010 will die vorliegende Publikation eine Annäherung an diesen komplexen Zusammenhang zwischen einer äußerst restriktiven Urheberrechtspraxis und dem Zugang zu Wissen und Bildung als wesentlichen Elementen für die Entwicklung und Stärkung einer partizipativen Demokratie bieten. Wir danken der Stiftung Via Libre und insbesondere Beatriz Busaniche für die hervorragende editorische Arbeit und den Autorinnen und Autoren für die anregenden Beiträge.Fundación Vía Libre / Fundación Heinrich Böll - Cono Su

Argentina copyleft: la crisis del modelo de derecho de autor y las prácticas para democratizar la cultura

172 p. : il.; 24x16 cm.Libro ElectrónicoEl libro aborda los problemas centrales de la Ley de Propiedad Intelectual de Argentina, desde la perspectiva de estudiantes y docentes universitarios, bibliotecarios, artistas, comunicadores sociales, programadores y usuarios de software libre, wikipedistas, miembros de redes libres, medios de comunicación comunitarios, entre otros. El abordaje de los derechos culturales desde una perspectiva amplia implica necesariamente poner en debate los sistemas legales vigentes que restringen la circulación e ilegalizan muchas prácticas de socialización de la cultura, en particular en entornos medidados por las nuevas tecnologías digitales. No se trata sólo de una crítica a la situación vigente, sino de propuestas constructivas basadas en experiencias comunitarias de construcción colaborativa de conocimiento desde diferentes enfoques, y en particular desde los usos de las nuevas tecnologías que permiten digitalizar, distribuir y construir cultura colectivamente.Indice Organizaciones editoras Organizaciones participantes Autores participantes Prólogo, por Michael Alvarez Kalverkamp Introducción, por Beatriz Busaniche PRIMERA PARTE Beatriz Busaniche La regulación argentina: comentarios sobre la Ley de Propiedad Intelectual 11.723 Lila Pagola Efecto copyleft avant la lettre: o cómo explicar el copyleft donde todos lo practicamos Horacio Potel Las miserias contra la filosofía Ana María Sanllorenti y Lucía Pelaya Las amenazas a la misión de las Bibliotecas y la legislación de derecho de autor en Argentina Beatriz Busaniche La privatización del dominio público Alejandro Mizzoni, Daniel Cantarín y Evelin Heidel Los esbirros del copyright y la comunidad académica. El Caso BiblioFyL Federico Heinz Software vs. Copyright Patricio Lorente Copyright y redes P2P: ¿El cielo o el infierno de los creadores? Juan Pablo Suárez Instituto Nacional del Libro: velar por las restricciones Federico Heinz De libros electrónicos, agua seca y otras quimeras Evelin Heidel ¿Cuánto cuesta tu educación gratuita? SEGUNDA PARTE Federico Heinz Software Libre: la revolución constructiva María Eugenia Nuñez, Javier Castrillo, Beatriz Busaniche Aprender en libertad Pablo Vannini Software Social Roberto Fiadone Comunidades que construyen conocimiento libre Gabriel Acquistapace Turbulencias en la nube Nicolás Echániz BuenosAiresLibre: Libertad, capa 1 MarilinaWinik Ediciones Copyleft Paula Castello y Santiago Marino La osadía de pensar distinto Sebastián Vázquez Traficando Futuro: Cultura Libre y Comunicación Alternativa Beatriz Busaniche y Evelin Heidel A modo de epílogo: propuestas de cara al futur