A children’s author and AI advocate champions diverse voices’ importance to Biden’s executive order

It’s Civil Rights Week in Baltimore. This year marked the 60th anniversary of the civil rights movement but work remains to be done when it comes to civil rights and anti-racism in Baltimore and beyond. That goes for the implications of the latest tech, as well.

On Monday, President Joseph Biden issued an executive order that aims to guarantee the safety and trustworthiness of artificial intelligence. The order includes some line items on how Biden and his administration don’t want to “deepen discrimination, bias, and other abuses” in various sectors — including the justice system.

This intention could appear to contradict other moves the administration made. For instance, in the 2022 State of the Union Address, the president stated plans to continue maintaining police department funding levels even though advocates in cities like Baltimore pushed to reduce that funding.

Local author Amber Ivey, an advocate for diversity and inclusion in the tech sector, overall thinks she likes this White House-led “comprehensive strategy.” But that support comes with a few caveats.

“One of the things I will say: It does not specifically address the challenges that are faced by Black women and girls. But I appreciate the overall emphasis in putting us in a step in the right direction,” Ivey, who also works as a vice president of impact advisory at Social Finance, told Technical.ly.

Ivey added that the executive order also didn’t address the specific ways AI can hurt marginalized groups.

“We know, for example, that AI has issues with particularly [AI] for vision, [it] has issues with identifying people with darker skin colors. We know that technology, predictive analytics and other tools have been used in a way to identify crime in certain communities based on data.”

In December 2022, Baltimore’s ordinance banning the private sector’s use of facial recognition technology (FRT) officially expired. This could have implications for Baltimore city and its residents, as it allows entities like the Baltimore Police Department to use these technologies for suspect profiling.

Sentiments among advocates regarding FRT lean toward caution, but other forms of AI-dependent tech present their own issues. For instance, Ivey found herself being profiled by generative AI just through the use of simple prompts.

“One thing I did, random test, I was playing around with ChatGPT and I asked it to write something for me,” she said. “And I said I am a 39-year-old Black woman. It then wrote something that was in slang, in words that I don’t use in my own everyday language, but it had assumed that that’s what a 39-year-old Black woman sounds like.”

Amber Ivey. (Courtesy Amber Ivey)

Even if it wasn’t for the same reasons as others, she wasn’t alone in her fears surrounding AI and its power. The heightened caution around generative AI and FRT stems from past instances — notably during protests following the murder of George Floyd, when federal agencies employed facial recognition software to identify protesters. The use of such technology has, in the past, resulted in wrongful arrests and detentions.

Ivey ultimately thinks that clearer rules about how it’s used by all parties can help keep this power from making entrenched discrimination even worse.

“I truly believe it can transform how we think about the tech industry,” she said. “One of the things that [is] very important for me: I’ve worked in spaces where we’ve talked about creating guardrails, around monitoring technology. So by setting a clear guideline and expectation for AI developers, stakeholders, companies, people who are using the tech — even just users on the consumer side — we have the potential to make AI systems more transparent, more accountable and try to get rid of some of those discriminatory biases.”

Ivey also seemed enthusiastic about the role of education, particularly for the younger generation, in helping better inform people ahead of these massive technological shifts. She referenced her two books — “AI… Meets… AI” and the upcoming “My First AI Robot” — as tools to help prepare young people for this evolving world. For adults, she recommended Harvard University’s free course, “CS50: Introduction to Computer Science.”

Education aside, she also noted that the executive order is just a starting point.

“But I want to just say this, however,” she said. “Even though we have this thing, it’s to remember that this is at an executive order level. In the document, it also called on Congress to do things. Like, there are other things that have to happen within policy, within regulations that have to happen, that have to go beyond the executive order. This is the beginning. And if we want to make sure real change comes we have to remember grassroots efforts, community involvement, diverse voices and technology.”