{"id":23707,"date":"2021-04-04T04:56:35","date_gmt":"2021-04-04T04:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rbsitsoftwaresolution.com\/blog\/facebook-gets-a-c-startup-rates-the-ethics-of-social-media-platforms-targets-asset-managers.html"},"modified":"2021-04-04T04:56:35","modified_gmt":"2021-04-04T04:56:35","slug":"facebook-gets-a-c-startup-rates-the-ethics-of-social-media-platforms-targets-asset-managers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/facebook-gets-a-c-startup-rates-the-ethics-of-social-media-platforms-targets-asset-managers.html","title":{"rendered":"Facebook gets a C; startup rates the \u2018ethics\u2019 of social media platforms, targets asset managers"},"content":{"rendered":"

By now you\u2019ve probably heard of ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) ratings<\/a> for companies, or ratings for their carbon footprint. Well, now a U.K. company has come up with a way of rating the \u201cethics\u201d of social media companies.<\/p>\n

EthicsGrade<\/a> is an ESG ratings agency, focusing on AI governance. Headed up Charles Radclyffe<\/a>, the former head of AI at Fidelity, it uses AI-driven models to create a more complete picture of the ESG of organizations, harnessing natural language processing to automate the analysis of huge data sets. This includes tracking controversial topics and public statements.<\/p>\n

Frustrated with the green-washing of some \u201cenvironmental\u201d stocks, Radclyffe realized that the AI governance of social media companies was not being properly considered, despite presenting an enormous risk to investors in the wake of such scandals as the manipulation of Facebook by companies such as Cambridge Analytica during the U.S. election and the U.K.\u2019s Brexit referendum.<\/p>\n

EthicsGrade Industry Summary Scorecard \u2013 Social Media<\/a><\/p>\n

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Image Credits:<\/strong> EthicsGrade<\/p>\n

The idea is that these ratings are used by companies to better see where they should improve. But the twist is that asset managers can also see where the risks of AI might lie.<\/p>\n

Speaking to TechCrunch he said: \u201cWhile at Fidelity I got a reputation within the firm for being the go-to person, for my colleagues in the investment team, who wanted to understand the risks within the technology firms that we were investing in. After being asked a number of times about some dodgy facial recognition company or a social media platform, I realized there was actually a massive absence of data around this stuff as opposed to anecdotal evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says that when he left Fidelity he decided EthicsGrade would cover not just ESGs but also AI ethics for platforms that are driven by algorithms.<\/p>\n

He told me: \u201cWe\u2019ve built a model to analyze technology governance. We\u2019ve covered 20 industries. So most of what we\u2019ve published so far has been non-tech companies because these are risks that are inherent in many other industries, other than simply social media or big tech. But over the next couple of weeks, we\u2019re going live with our data on things which are directly related to tech, starting with social media.\u201d<\/p>\n

Essentially, what they are doing is a big parallel with what is being done in the ESG space.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question we want to be able to answer is how does TikTok compare against Twitter or WeChat as against WhatsApp. And what we\u2019ve essentially found is that things like GDPR have done a lot of good in terms of raising the bar on questions like data privacy and data governance. But in a lot of the other areas that we cover, such as ethical risk or a firm\u2019s approach to public policy, are indeed technical questions about risk management,\u201d says Radclyffe.<\/p>\n

But, of course, they are effectively rating algorithms. Are the ratings they are giving the social platforms themselves derived from algorithms? EthicsGrade says they are training their own AI through NLP as they go so that they can automate what is currently very human analysts centric, just as \u201csustainalytics\u201d et al. did years ago in the environmental arena.<\/p>\n

So how are they coming up with these ratings? EthicsGrade says it is evaluating \u201cthe extent to which organizations implement transparent and democratic values, ensure informed consent and risk management protocols, and establish a positive environment for error and improvement.\u201d And this is all achieved through publicly available data \u2014 policy, website, lobbying etc. In simple terms, they rate the governance of the AI, not necessarily the algorithms themselves but what checks and balances are in place to ensure that the outcomes and inputs are ethical and managed.<\/p>\n

\n

MIT professor wants to overhaul \u2018The Hype Machine\u2019 that powers social media<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\u201cOur goal really is to target asset owners and asset managers,\u201d says Radclyffe. \u201cSo if you look at any of these firms like, let\u2019s say Twitter, 29% of Twitter is owned by five organizations: it\u2019s Vanguard, Morgan Stanley, Blackrock, State Street and ClearBridge. If you look at the ownership structure of Facebook or Microsoft, it\u2019s the same firms: Fidelity, Vanguard and BlackRock. And so really we only need to win a couple of hearts and minds, we just need to convince the asset owners and the asset managers that questions like the ones journalists have been asking for years are pertinent and relevant to their portfolios and that\u2019s really how we\u2019re planning to make our impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if they look at content of things like Tweets, he said no: \u201cWe don\u2019t look at content. What we concern ourselves [with] is how they govern their technology, and where we can find evidence of that. So what we do is we write to each firm with our rating, with our assessment of them. We make it very clear that it\u2019s based on publicly available data. And then we invite them to complete a survey. Essentially, that survey helps us validate data of these firms. Microsoft is the only one that\u2019s completed the survey.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ideally, firms will \u201cverify the information, that they\u2019ve got a particular process in place to make sure that things are well-managed and their algorithms don\u2019t become discriminatory.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an age increasingly driven by algorithms, it will be interesting to see if this idea of rating them for risk takes off, especially amongst asset managers.<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/Kncf-m0_-24\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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