Understanding Human Impact: Social and Equity Assessments for AI Technologies Social and Equity Impact Assessments have broad applications but can be a useful tool to explore and mitigate for Machine Learning fairness issues and can be applied to product specific questions as a way to generate insights and learnings about users, as well as impacts on society broadly as a result of the deployment of new and emerging technologies. In this presentation, my goal is to advocate for and highlight the need to consult community and external stakeholder engagement to develop a new knowledge base and understanding of the human and social consequences of algorithmic decision making and to introduce principles, methods and process for these types of impact assessments.

1. Proprietary + Confidential
Understanding Human
Impact: Social and Equity
Assessments for AI
Technologies
Jamila Smith-Loud
Google, Trust and Safety Research

2. What are Social + Equity Impact Assessments
Social Equity Impact Assessments assess the anticipated
or contemporary socio-economic (change) both long-term
and short term for a target population (determined by
membership in a specific sensitive or legally protected
sub-group or by geographic location of population) as a
result of direct or indirect engagement with a product.

3. Impacts + People
Social Impacts
● Living Conditions (change in income, inequality,
poverty concentration)
● Governance/Rights (human rights and civil
rights)
● Social Cultural (representational harm, change in
community cohesion)
● Employment
● Health
● Social and Physical Infrastructure
● Environment
● Satisfaction (uncertainty about social change)
Marginalized Populations
● Aboriginal/Indigenous peoples
● Age-related groups
● Disability
● Historically oppressed ethnic/racial communities
● Non-binary gender Identity
● Homeless/Underhoused
● Inner-urban communities
● Rural communities
● LGBQT
● Women and Girls
● Immigrants, Refugees and Migrants
● Other: Any other groups who has experienced
systematic marginalization

4. Proprietary + Confidential
Approach
Center
Center the voices and experiences
of those communities who often
bear the burden of the negative
impacts
Anticipate
Anticipate potential negative
and unintended
consequences
Engage
Openly address issues of racism,
social class, sexism, xenophobia,
homophobia and all forms of
cultural prejudice and
intolerance

5. Engage in Hard Questions
1. What is the historical and current context that is
shaping this issue?
2. What other forms of inequity are intersecting with this
issues (gender, race, ability status, class/income,
sexual orientation)?
3. How does power influence outcomes and feasibility of
interventions?

6. Mitigations
Translating findings
of risk and potential
impacts to product
mitigations and
improvements
Likelihood & severity of risk
Social + Equity related
impact assessments
Product & domain specific
context application
Impact
Assessments
ContextRisk
Anticipatory Process

7. Conceptualizing Impacted Users
Vulnerability
Increased risk of impact as a
result of external social,
economic or cultural
conditions
Susceptibility
Increased risk of impact
related to endogenous factors
such as individual income,
employment status or
education levels
Marginalization
Increased risk of impact due
to systemic or institutional
exclusion

8. Identifying Impacted Users

9. Disaggregation of key
indicators including relevant
social and economic data to
scope impacts as a potential
consequence of the machine
learning technology
➔ Can the indicator of interest be
disaggregated? Maybe by race, gender,
geography or income.
➔ Are you able to drill down within a category,
the more precise your understanding can
become
➔ More detailed data than national averages is
key in identifying and understanding potential
user impacts
➔ Collection of data to allow disaggregation may
require alternate sampling and data collection
approaches
➔ Work to provide a research-based explanation
for data that show inequities. Otherwise your
audience will supply their own explanation,
and this is where stereotypes too often fill the
gap

10. Food Access + Income Disparity

12. To reduce negative unintended
consequences in areas where access to
quality food is an issue
Purpose
Little to no access to healthy food options,
increasing gentrification, displacement,
community distrust of govt. & tech
Context
Toward a Logical Process: Anticipating + Centering

13. Time, Gaps in knowledge and
comfort
13
Identify Resources
Acknowledge
Constraints
Multidisciplinary research teams,
external stakeholders, Xfn
relationships

14. Product interventions & community based
mitigations
Create Tangible Outputs
Case study, survey research,
focus groups
Activities & Inputs

15. .
C
Aspire toward positive effects
in principle and practice
Towards operationalizing fair & equitable technologies