A new analysis by NYU research fellow and adjunct professor, Mona Sloane, and CUNY doctoral student, Emmanuel Moss, advocates for implementing qualitative research into AI. Sloane and Moss call for more qualitative social research as a measure to eradicate the bias in AI and to better incorporate human values.
A qualitative approach acknowledges the unintended incorporation of the researcher’s biases and considers the finding’s impacts on the world. This differs from the more popular quantitative approach, which omits such factors and disregards the people developing the AI. Sloane and Moss also call for the inclusion of social sciences into AI development. Sloane said, “to achieve socially just technology, we need to include the broadest possible notion of social science…that [has] developed methods for grappling with the vastness of [the] social world.”