Classification and its Discontents
inuities
Scott H. Hawley, Ph.D.Professor of Physics
Belmont University
Classification...
- is a fundamental process in science, philsophy, sociology, medicine, law, industry,...and more.
- simplifies the intractable complexity of the world around us
- by grouping similar things together
- drawing boundaries to demarcate territories of interest
- to help us decide which policy is applicable
Classification is...
- Infrastructure
- Policy
- Politics
- Power
- the lifeblood of society
- increasingly being automated.
Classification Words
clustering - grouping similar things
taxonomy - setting up classes/categories/bins
labeling - what to name the classes
assignment - to which class does a new thing belong?
threshold - boundary/criterion between classes
sort, decide, choose, file, discern, judge, codify, name, peg, divide, segregate, arrange, grade, count as, identify, typecast, distinguish, pigeonhole
Classification in different Fields
Biology
Aristotle:
Linneus' taxonomy
"
"
Haeckel's Tree of Life:
Bible: Is this food kosher?
What is this thing
Library Science
Organizing recorded knowledge for the purpose of retrievalSubject headings, Keywords
...can be politically charged.
Medicine
Diagnosis: which disease is it?Coding
Is it cancer? (Whitney et al., 2019)
IEEE "AI vs. Doctors"
Law
Was the contract boken?What are appropriate consequences?
Criminal justice: What risk level is this defendant?
Music
| "Genre" is social, economic, political: |
|
Cover song identification (e.g. YouTube)
|
Why is a physicist interested?
- Compared to other areas of science,
physicists do much more
regression* than classification.
*fitting a curve to data points - But I got involved in..
- Machine Learning (ML)
- "Bridging the Two Cultures II" (B2C2) grant
(Struthers,Bishop):
"Christian Responses to AI"
- Questions of aesthetics, ethics, policy: "How would one automate this?"
- "AI Ethics" often involves societal impact due to classifications
Binary Classification
Binary Classification in Song
Binary classification is a common & important human activity. Questions of identity, purpose, even reality itself...
| Choice A | Choice B | Song | Artist/Band |
| Is this the real life | Is this just fantasy | Bohemian Rhapsody | Queen |
| Are we human | Or are we dancer | Human | The Killers |
| Can't tell if you're a boy | Or a girl | Rebel Rebel | David Bowie |
| Is you is | Or is you ain't my baby | Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby | Louis Jordan |
| Was it something I said | Or something I did | Every Rose Has its Thorn | Poison |
| Should I stay | Or should I go | Should I Stay or Should I Go | The Clash |
Binary classification example
Machine Learning
is Moving In
Math/CS Methods
(Press Reload if interactive graphs don't appear)
Logistic Regression
For binary classificationFeature selection
Can you divide these?Feature Engineering
Labeling Issues
Labeling Issues
In ImageNet dataset: https://www.excavating.aiKate Crawford and Trevor Paglen, “Excavating AI: The Politics of Training Sets for Machine Learning (Sept. 19, 2019)
Classifiying people
- Nazis' use of Hollerith machines
- Phrenology (China: updated with ML)
- Facebook quizzes -> Targeted Ads -> "The Great Hack"
Classifications as Interventions
Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD)
When you have a threshold or date at which a classification is implemented.RDD Illustrated
Hawley's Conjecture
Release Rates
(Stevenson, 2017)
Schooling in Kenya
(Ozier, 2018)
Recent Headlines
Content Moderation: "Pinterest says AI reduced reported self-harm content by 88%" (Oct 10, 2019)Classification and its Discontinuities
Scott H. Hawley, @drscotthawley
Belmont University
Belmont University
This work was supported Sponsored by a grant given by Bridging the Two
Cultures of Science and the Humanities II, a project run by Scholarship
and Christianity in Oxford (SCIO), the UK subsidiary of the Council for
Christian Colleges and Universities, with funding by Templeton Religion
Trust and the Blankemeyer Foundation.