AI Ethics: 30-Day Growth Guide

Points clés

• Systems infer far more than you share, so audit what could be guessed from your location, purchases and contacts, not only what you typed.
• When the thing being detected is rare, even an accurate tool flags mostly innocent people, so always ask how common the target is.
• Once a number becomes a target, people and systems start gaming it, so check what an AI tool is actually rewarded for.
• Turn private judgement into written questions for the people who run a system, because institutions move when someone asks on the record.
• Count catches and changes every week, and when a week slips, drop to a five-minute floor instead of restarting the programme.

À l'intérieur de ce bit

1. How the four weeks fit together

   This programme runs for four weeks, about twenty minutes a day on five days, with two days kept free for catching up. Each week has one theme, and the themes widen on purpose: week one looks at the data you give and the data others guess, week two at judging a system's claims, week three at how whole systems behave over time, and week four at using your voice with the people who run them.

2. Week one: what is inferred, not just shared

   Most privacy advice is about what you type. The advanced problem is inference: a system working out things you never said from data you did share.

3. Week two: reading accuracy claims like an expert

   A claim of ninety-nine per cent accuracy sounds decisive and often is not, because of base rates: how common the thing being detected actually is. When it is rare, a small false-alarm rate applied to everyone else produces far more false alarms than true catches.

4. Week three: targets, creep and the blame gap

   Week three moves from single decisions to systems over time, where three effects appear. Once a number becomes a target, people improve the number instead of the thing it measured, an effect known as Goodhart's law.

5. Week four: from private judgement to public voice

   Three weeks of noticing mean little if nothing changes beyond your own settings. Week four turns judgement into voice.

6. Measuring progress and rescuing a slipped week

   Progress here is measured three ways. Catches should rise, especially in weeks two and three, as you learn to see issues you once walked past.