Open fititnt opened 6 years ago
On Apr 30, 2018
This is proposal for a free discussion about Internationalization and official translations of international documents related to ethics and ethics of AI/S. Internationalization/Localization are always challenging in any organization who works with normative documents, so is reasonable assume it would be at IEEE global initiative and any other working groups and organizations who promote documents related to ethics of AI/S.
This discussion is not exclusive about a possible translation of final version of Ethically Aligned Design (EAD) document. Let's think ahead: what documents (that allows free translation/sharing) could be very useful to those who implement laws, teach about the subject or would influence the public opinion about issues related to the EAD document? For documents that do not have translations: is possible to build a sorted list that could be used as reference to other people prioritize translations? Are there specific issues that do not have permissive license documents that could be suggested to third parties to create?
By free discussion it explicit means
Some external links that could be useful to read
I will start the discussion with some personal comments about the impact that translations could do in non-natively speaking countries of English.
PS.: The author of this discussion lives in a country that natively speaks the seventh most spoken language in the world, Portuguese. One of the organizations that manages human rights documents, the UN, has 6 official languages, and Portuguese is not one of them.
May 2, 2018.
I will use as example one impact of web accessibility caused by missing / wrong translations and use inductive reasoning on the impact of missing / wrong translations of international documents on ethics and ethics of AI/S.
Years ago, the web was transitioning from HTML 4.01 to "HTML5" (HTML 5.0). When I was on the road to becoming a web accessibility expert one day I was shocked to see that one of the sites I had done had some specific accessibility errors as per the HTML 5 documentation in English. I went to investigate and realized that most Brazilian sites had the same errors, except those written in the previous version, in HTML 4. I spoke with other Brazilians, and even those who were also speakers at technical events were shocked, because some specific mistakes we were even teaching wrong.
Websites using HTML 5 were less accessible than those written with HTML in older versions. That is, there was a regression in implementation of a new technology (in HTML semantics), which made it less user-friendly to screen readers.
The probable main reason for this was the following: there was an error of translation in technical documents of people who where experts and no one was aware of this impact, even they. On the following years, many examples of implementation also induced people to write wrong code, less semantic HTML 5 than would be with the old version, even in articles claiming to explain semantic HTML. In the countries of Portuguese speakers (or at least in Brazil), this became an echo chamber.
Not surprisingly, websites that did not have these error patterns were made with code outside of Brazil: a wordpress website with free international template without local customization could easily be more accessible by default.
Even after this specific type of issue become discussed, some people updated their websites, but the ones who where more interested in changes where more the new developers. But even they where afraid of make some errors, as they also had one additional mental load: some key terms where in English and most material in Portuguese lack of deep and focused more on other features of the newer version.
If at start some translations errors or misinterpretations lead to some summarized or new created documents that amplified more misinformation years later, then the lack of translation of original documents also lead to new people have a hard time when these errors where perceived. On this specific example, the more senior developers preferred to stay silent. And at least one person who sent material to explain how to solve such problems at a national technical conference was not accepted. This is at least an uncomfortable situation, as the root problems where not complex.
> Inductive reasoning with possible lack of translations on ethics and ethics of AI/S
Some similarities:
So, my inductive reasoning here is that without some strategies that could mitigate some human errors, the area of ethics of AI/S could have some smaller misinterpretations reinforced with echo chambers.
Most of the ideas of documents such as Ethically Aligned Design, and other human rights documents are very reasonable, people tend to agree. It is possible that people in the early years in their countries of origin discuss topics that draw more attention, but the problem is precisely in the details where blind spots may occur. The example I gave about web accessibility in a country was a blind spot. Probably when it started people were busy with other immediate issues, maybe similar on AI/S ethics about no autonomous weapons & basic human rights is today.
> The ethics documents not specific to AI/S
One of the main reasons of my post here and my effort to make clear for everyone that this beyond AI/S ethics and that by listing reference documents it can be used later for people on their countries.
I was looking for translations to Portuguese (the 7th most spoken language in the world, and the UN officially use 6 languages) at https://github.com/EticaAI/docs.etica.ai/issues I got scared when I found that some documents could have multiple translations (like one from Organization of American States have differences from the document at Brazilian Chamber of Deputies) and that is even possible that some laws around the world for those countries outside the 6 UN languages may have been influenced by opinions based on inaccurate translations.
Be aware of the big picture is think that even the UN will probably need help. They are discussion a lot of AI impact but exist documents 50 years old that are important for the local implementation and that needs some working on it, it is not just the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
There are some important documents to help implementers of artificial intelligence and autonomous systems and for countries that do not speak English natively this could be an additional challenge. And even for countries that are not among the 6 official languages of the UN, it seems that the challenge may be slightly higher, since some human rights documents may not be simple to find in other languages.
In this topic I will copy and paste some texts that I spent working writing about this subject while interacting with other groups. I will not copy answers that are not mine.
It is worth remembering that my opinion can evolve over the years.