A wave of recent scholarship documenting the discriminatory harms of algorithmic systems has spurred widespread interest in algorithmic accountability and regulation. Yet effective accountability and regulation is stymied by a persistent lack of resources supporting public understanding of algorithms and artificial intelligence. Through interactions with a US-based civil rights organization and their coalition of community organizations, we identify a need for (i) heuristics that aid stakeholders in distinguishing between types of analytic and information systems in lay language, and (ii) risk assessment tools for such systems that begin by making algorithms more legible. The present work delivers a toolkit to achieve these aims. This paper both presents the Algorithmic Equity Toolkit (AEKit) Equity as an artifact, and details how our participatory process shaped its design. Our work fits within human-computer interaction scholarship as a demonstration of the value of HCI methods and approaches to problems in the area of algorithmic transparency and accountability.

The damaging effects of hate speech in social media are evident during the last few years, and several organizations, researchers and the social media platforms themselves have tried to harness them without great success. Recently, following the advent of deep learning, several novel approaches appeared in the field of hate speech detection. However, it is apparent that such approaches depend on large-scale datasets in order to exhibit competitive performance. In this paper, we present a novel, publicly available collection of datasets in five different languages, that consists of tweets referring to journalism-related accounts, including high-quality human annotations for hate speech and personal attack. To build the datasets we follow a concise annotation strategy and employ an active learning approach. Additionally, we present a number of state-of-the-art deep learning architectures for hate speech detection and use these datasets to train and evaluate them. Finally, we propose an ensemble model that outperforms all individual models.

Powerful formalisms for abstract argumentation have been proposed, among them abstract dialectical frameworks (ADFs) that allow for a succinct and flexible specification of the relationship between arguments, and the GRAPPA framework which allows argumentation scenarios to be represented as arbitrary edge-labelled graphs. The complexity of ADFs and GRAPPA is located beyond NP and ranges up to the third level of the polynomial hierarchy. The combined complexity of Answer Set Programming (ASP) exactly matches this complexity when programs are restricted to predicates of bounded arity. In this paper, we exploit this coincidence and present novel efficient translations from ADFs and GRAPPA to ASP. More specifically, we provide reductions for the five main ADF semantics of admissible, complete, preferred, grounded, and stable interpretations, and exemplify how these reductions need to be adapted for GRAPPA for the admissible, complete and preferred semantics. Under consideration in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP).

Truly, it triggered the worst of times. What was thought to be the most stable of industries – finance – was brought to its knees. It triggered a new era of corporate financial scrutiny. The oft-quoted term'more for less' was permanently inscribed on the heads of all legal professionals. During the great recession in the West, companies started to look at all areas to cut costs to survive.

We are all searching for new paradigms. Democracy is broken, capitalism questionable and the environment a disaster. Our views used to be simple to be identified, tagged, and sold to, but social media has obliterated that. We now live in a community of one, just me. All social media feeds reinforce my views, exclude challenges to my values, and allow me to live in my own bubble in isolation without the need to consider the opinions of others.

The city of Portland, Oregon, is considering a unique ban on facial recognition software that could limit how private companies use it. Current bans on facial recognition technology, such as ones in San Francisco and Oakland, California, only affect city agencies such as police departments. If the Portland City Council passes the pending legislation next year, officials may copy those efforts and add private retailers and airlines to the ban. Portland Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty is spearheading the proposed ban, citing concerns of privacy, consent and civil rights. "The technology is currently extremely biased against people of color and women," Hardesty said at a September work session on the ban.

As a birthplace for global tech disrupters, Europe -- home to the likes of Spotify and Skype -- still lags behind the US and China and their juggernauts such as Apple, Alibaba, Google and Amazon. The continent is also falling behind North America and east Asia in artificial intelligence, as measured by investment and patent activity. A fragmented digital market, limited risk capital and onerous bureaucracy are several reasons cited for Europe playing catch up to Silicon Valley. However, Europe's more regulated, activist political culture has proved to be an asset, as highlighted by many of the region's start-ups tackling social-services issues in the "tech for good" sector and working directly with central and local governments in "govtech". Europe's start-ups reflect its public service traditions, says Paul Duan, founder of Bayes Impact, a non-profit group that built an AI -powered job counsellor.

Actress and freelance writer Yumi Ishikawa, whose campaign against mandatory high heels in the workplace saw broad public support, has stepped up her fight against strict corporate dress codes in Japan to include a ban at some firms on women wearing glasses. Ishikawa shot to prominence this year with her drive against Japanese office culture, in which high heels are seen as near-obligatory when job-hunting or working in the office. Known by the hashtag #KuToo -- a play on words from the Japanese word "kutsu," meaning "shoes," and "kutsuu," meaning "pain" -- the campaign was recognized Monday for having generated one of the buzzwords of the year. Ishikawa's latest petition to relax the rules, delivered to the labor ministry on Tuesday, has attracted more than 31,000 signatures. "The root cause of the problem is that (there are companies) that have rules for women only -- such as a ban on wearing glasses or a requirement to wear make-up," the 32-year-old told reporters.

Serial cybersecurity entrepreneur Shlomo Kramer said in a 2005 interview that cybersecurity is "a bit like Alice in Wonderland" where you run as fast as you can only to stay in place. In 2020, to paraphrase the second part of the Red Queen's observation (actually from Through the Looking Glass), if you wish to stay ahead of cyber criminals, you must run twice--or ten times--as fast as that. The 141 predictions listed here reveal the state-of-mind of key participants in the cybersecurity defense industry and highlight all that's hot today. The future is murky, but we know for sure that on January 1, 2020, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) will go into effect; that the U.S. presidential election will take place on November 3, 2020; and that on October 1, 2020, if you "wish to fly on commercial aircrafts or access federal facilities" in the U.S., you must have a REAL ID compliant card. Other than these known events, the crystal balls of the participants in this survey warn us ...

SAN FRANCISCO – The co-founders of Google are stepping down as executives of its parent company, Alphabet, ending a remarkable two decades during which Larry Page and Sergey Brin shaped a startup born in a Silicon Valley garage into one of the world's largest, most powerful -- and, increasingly, most feared -- firms in the world. Sundar Pichai, who has been leading Google as CEO for more than four years, will take on additional duties as Alphabet's CEO, the position held by Page. Brin and Page met as Stanford University graduate students in 1995 and started the company soon after. What started as a way to catalog the growing internet has now become one of the most powerful companies in the world. Google dominates online search and digital advertising and makes the world's most widely used operating system for smartphones, Android.