Twitter has launched its first ever artificial intelligence bug bounty program, challenging people to find bias in its image-cropping algorithm and offering cash prizes for those who best assess the models.
The winners — chosen based on a rubric created by Twitter's Machine Learning Ethics, Transparency and Accountability or META team — will be announced at this year's DEF CON AI Village, and the first place prize will be $3,500.
"We're inspired by how the research and hacker communities helped the security field establish best practices for identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities in order to protect the public. We want to cultivate a similar community, focused on ML ethics, to help us identify a broader range of issues than we would be able to on our own," Rumman Chowdhury and Jutta Williams, META's leader and product manager respectively, wrote in a company blog post.
Twitter removed the image-cropping algorithm from public use after small instances of bias were uncovered in research by the META team earlier this year. The image-cropping assessment was the first public change created by the new team after Chowdhury, a noted AI ethicist, joined the company to lead its ML transparency work alongside Williams and Ari Font, the engineering director of Twitter's ML platform.
Climate TRACE's data show emissions at the facility-level.Image: Climate TRACE