Twitter said it would offer a cash \u00ab\u00a0bounty\u00a0\u00bb to users and researchers to help root out algorithmic bias on the social media platform.<\/b>
\nTwitter said Friday it would offer a cash \u00ab\u00a0bounty\u00a0\u00bb to users and researchers to help root out algorithmic bias on the social media platform. The San Francisco tech firm said this would be \u00ab\u00a0the industry’s first algorithmic bias bounty competition,\u00a0\u00bb with prizes up to $3,500. The competition is based on the \u00ab\u00a0bug bounty\u00a0\u00bb programs some websites and platforms offer to find security holes and vulnerabilities, according to Twitter executives Rumman Chowdhury and Jutta Williams. \u00ab\u00a0Finding bias in machine learning models is difficult, and sometimes, companies find out about unintended ethical harms once they’ve already reached the public,\u00a0\u00bb Chowdhury and Williams wrote in a blog post. \u00ab\u00a0We want to change that.\u00a0\u00bb They said the hacker bounty model offers promise in finding algorithmic bias. \u00ab\u00a0We’re inspired by how the research and hacker communities helped the security field establish best practices for identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities in order to protect the public,\u00a0\u00bb they wrote. \u00ab\u00a0We want to cultivate a similar community… for proactive and collective identification of algorithmic harms.\u00a0\u00bb The move comes amid growing concerns about automated algorithmic systems, which, despite an effort to be neutral, can incorporate racial or other forms of bias. Twitter, which earlier this year launched an algorithmic fairness initiative, said in May it was scrapping an automated image-cropping system after its review found bias in the algorithm controlling the function. The messaging platform said it found the algorithm delivered \u00ab\u00a0unequal treatment based on demographic differences,\u00a0\u00bb with white people and males favored over Black people and females, and \u00ab\u00a0objectification\u00a0\u00bb bias that focused on a woman’s chest or legs, described as \u00ab\u00a0male gaze.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n