AISW #022: Anonymous5, India-based software developer📜(AI, Software, & Wetware interview)
An interview with an anonymous software developer based in India on their stories of using AI and how they feel about how AI is using people's data and content.
Introduction
This post is part of our 6P interview series on “AI, Software, and Wetware”. Our guests share their experiences with using AI, and how they feel about AI using their data and content.
Note: In this article series, “AI” means artificial intelligence and spans classical statistical methods, data analytics, machine learning, generative AI, and other non-generative AI. See this Glossary and “AI Fundamentals #01: What is Artificial Intelligence?” for reference.
Interview
Today’s guest is an anonymous software developer based in India.
Anonymous5, I’m delighted to welcome you as my next guest for “AI, Software, and Wetware”. Please tell us about yourself, who you are, and what you do.
I am a software developer with four years of experience in developing and designing web applications for various use cases like gaming portal, real estate property IoT device access control, tourism, automotive industry related telemetry data based IoT, analytics and cloud native solutions. [IoT = Internet of Things]
What is your experience with AI, ML, and analytics? Have you used it professionally or personally, or studied the technology?
I have worked on an R&D project to detect and identify lobate debris aprons on Mars using deep learning algorithms.
I have also worked on data analytics of real time Slack bot chat data and implemented an NLP [natural language processing] solution with the prompted commands.
Can you share a specific story on how you have used AI or ML? What are your thoughts on how well the AI features of those tools worked for you, or didn’t?
The issues that I faced with Slack chat analytics data was that users at times gave ambiguous/empty text prompts along with commands. So, there were some incorrect values. We had to either clean them or use data correction methods to get readable analytics for each user.
That’s understandable - it’s pretty common for data science projects to spend a very high percentage of their effort on data cleaning and preprocessing, in order to get good results!
If you have avoided using AI-based tools for some things (or anything), can you share an example of when, and why you chose not to use AI?
I have avoided using ChatGPT and other AI based tools to write on sensitive social topics and to understand culture-specific facts because there were some ambiguity and unclear answers that were provided.
That’s understandable. Can you share an example of a specific topic on which you avoid using AI-based tools?
In case I am traveling somewhere, and use any tourism site which uses an LLM to get me information based on my searched prompts, then I would not want it to track my location and time when I was there. Just to avoid any security concerns.
Being cautious about being tracked definitely makes sense.
A common and growing concern nowadays is where AI/ML systems get the data and content they train on. They often use data that users put into online systems or publish online. And companies are not always transparent about how they intend to use our data when we sign up.
How do you feel about companies using data and content for training their AI and ML systems and tools? Should ethical AI tool companies get consent from (and compensate) people whose data they want to use for training? (Examples: musicians, artists, writers, actors, software developers, medical patients, students, social media users)
I do believe that users should be aware of their data or content that is being taken by ethical AI tool companies for their AI/ML models, and so consent should certainly be taken.
When you’ve used AI-based tools, do you as a user know where the data used for the AI models came from, and whether the original creators of the data consented to its use? (Not all tool providers are transparent about sharing this info)
No, I haven’t seen any such tool mentioning the usage, or any mention about the models being used.
When you’ve worked with building an AI-based tool or system, what can you share about where the data came from and how it was obtained?
For instance, where was the data sourced for the Slack bot chat data analytics?
The slack bot data was my company's proprietary workspace chats data. I had to provide specific prompt commands to every user in the workspace in order to get specific information and manage their daily inputs in intervals.
So basically, every user in the workspace was able to opt in by using these prompt commands - that sounds fair.
As members of the public, there are cases where our personal data or content may have been used, or has been used, by an AI-based tool or system. How do you feel about how your data has been handled?
In my opinion, personal data in any form, be it medical test results, facial recognition or what social networking site activities we are frequently doing, shouldn't be taken without our knowledge. People are facing many identity thefts, cyber attacks, and even there are safety concerns when details like location are tracked via those information. So, it is very concerning to think that our data is being handled by third parties for some research which users don't have a say for.
Public distrust of AI and tech companies has been growing. What do you think is THE most important thing that AI companies need to do to earn and keep your trust? Do you have specific ideas on how they can do that?
I think that these AI companies should share the agenda behind learning the data that they are collecting, like for educational purposes or developing a user specific model for better recommendation. Part of these suggestions helps in analyzing the trending demand in the market.
Conclusion
That’s a wrap! Anonymous5, thank you so much for joining our interview series. It’s been great learning about what you’re doing with artificial intelligence tools, how you decide when to use human intelligence for some things, and how you feel about use of your data!
About this interview series and newsletter
This post is part of our 2024 interview series on “AI, Software, and Wetware”. It showcases how real people around the world are using their wetware (brains and human intelligence) with AI-based software tools or being affected by AI.
And we’re all being affected by AI nowadays in our daily lives, perhaps more than we realize. For some examples, see post “But I don’t use AI”!
We want to hear from a diverse pool of people worldwide in a variety of roles. If you’re interested in being a featured interview guest (anonymous or with credit), please get in touch!
6 'P's in AI Pods is a 100% reader-supported publication. All new posts are FREE to read (and listen to). To automatically receive new 6P posts and support our work, consider becoming a subscriber! (If you like, you can subscribe to only People, or to any other sections of interest. Here’s how to manage sections.)
